The effect of mindfulness-based education on self-compassion and emotion regulation in obese girls

The overweight and obesity have spread among many communities and countries in recent years. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness training on emotion self-regulation and self-compassion in obese girls.

The present study was quasi-experimental and had a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population consisted of all obese girls who visited Mehr Counseling Clinic of Tehran in 2020. A total of 40 girls were selected by the convenience sampling method and randomly divided into experimental (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. Research tools included the emotion regulation questionnaire (Gross and John, 2003), and self-compassion scale (Neff, 2006). The experimental group received 10 one-hour sessions of mindfulness training twice a week but the control group did not receive any intervention. Data analysis was performed by ‎descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), and analysis of covariance by SPSS 26.

The results indicated that mindfulness training had a positive and significant effect on increasing the self-compassion score in participants in the experimental group (P<0.05). There was a significant difference in emotion regulation scores between the two groups in the post-test (P<0.05).

The research results indicated that mindfulness training was effective in improving self-compassion and emotion regulation of girls with obesity. The researcher suggests a 3-month follow-up period to achieve reliable results.