The Effectiveness of Compassionate Mind Training on Self-Criticism in female Students

Self-criticism is a common problem in adolescence and is the cause of many mood disorders and anxiety. Due to the importance of this issue, the present study was conducted with the aim of the effectiveness of compassionate mind training on self-criticism of female students. 

This research was a quasi-experimental project with pre-test, post-test and control group that was conducted in the academic year of 2019-2020 in the statistical population of female students of the first secondary school in Rahimabad. 50 students participated in this study through voluntary method who were assigned to the experimental and control groups by simple random method. After receiving the pre-test, the experimental group was trained in compassionate mind for 10 sessions; During this time, the control group did not receive any intervention. The Levels of Self-Criticism Scale was implemented in the assessment stages. Data analysis was performed using analysis of covariance in SPSS-21 statistical software.

The results showed that compassionate mind training had an effective role on the components of comparative self-criticism (P = 0.017), internalized (P = 0.0001) and overall score (P = 0.002). Overall, the Compassionate Mind Training was able to explain 0.19 of the changes in the overall self- criticism score. The results of the study of the adjusted means showed that after the test, the comparative, internalized mean scores and the overall score of the experimental group were significantly lower than the control group.

Training a compassionate mind has the potential to reduce self-criticism by modifying self-defeating beliefs and behaviors and increasing self-compassion. Therefore, it is suggested that the role of this intervention be considered in order to promote the psychological health of adolescents.