The Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy Training on Levels of Self-Criticism and Co-Rumination in Students with Suicidal Thoughts

The presence of suicidal thoughts is a strong predictor of future successful suicide, which is related to psychological factors. Therefore, providing timely therapeutic/educational interventions may be effective in controlling psychological factors and thereby reducing suicide. The aim of this research was to investigate effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy training on levels of self-criticism and co-rumination in students with suicidal thoughts.

This semi-experimental study was conducted using a pretest-posttest with non-equivalent control group design. In this study, the research population consisted of all the students in Ardabil branch, Islamic Azad University during the educational year of 1401-1402. After screening, 40 of them were selected using convenience sampling and by simple randomization method they were divided into two equal experimental and control groups (20 experimental and 20 control). The implementation of the experimental group was carried out in 8 sessions, each session lasting 75 minutes as a compassion-focused therapy training. However, the control group received no training and remained on the waiting list. Data were collected using the levels of self-criticism scale and the co-rumination questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (multivariate analysis of covariance) statistics in SPSS-24.

Results indicated that compassion-focused therapy training significantly reduced the levels of self-criticism and co-rumination in students with suicidal thoughts (P<0.05).

Based on the results, it can be concluded that the compassion-focused therapy training can be used as an effective intervention in reducing the levels of self-criticism and co-rumination in students with suicidal thoughts.