How Self-Compassion Helps Reduce Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety in Non-Clinical Slovak Youth: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation Strategies

Abstract

Self-compassion has received considerable attention for promoting well-being and reducing psychopathology, and preliminary findings generate the hypothesis that self-compassion influences mental health indirectly through adaptive emotion regulation strategies. The cross-sectional study investigates the links between self-compassion, emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and depression/anxiety symptoms in 420 Slovak adolescents and young adults (M_age = 19.4, SD = 3.2). We examined the direct and indirect effects of self-compassion on depression/anxiety symptoms through cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as mediators. The bivariate correlation analysis confirmed that depression and anxiety were significantly negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion. As predicted, depression and anxiety symptoms significantly and positively correlated with emotion suppression. Mediation analysis demonstrated an indirect effect of self-compassion on both depression and anxiety through a cognitive reappraisal. However, when controlling for the effect of depression, the mediation effect of cognitive reappraisal on the relationship between self-compassion and anxiety was eliminated. The study confirms that cognitive reappraisal affects the relationship between self-compassion and depression by regulating negative emotions. However, the protective role of self-compassion and cognitive reappraisal in reducing anxiety symptoms is questionable.