Interplay between self-compassion and affect during Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living for recurrent depression: an Autoregressive Latent Trajectory analysis

Avest, M.J. ter; Schuling, R.; Greven, C.U.; Huijbers, M.J.; Wilderjans, T.F.; Spinhoven, P.; Speckens, A.E.M. (2021)

Article / Letter to editor

Background: The current study aimed to investigate the possible interplay between self-compassion and affect during Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL) in recurrently depressed individuals.Methods: Data was used from a subsample of a parallel-group randomized controlled trial investigating the efficacy of MBCL in recurrently depressed adults (n = 104). Self-reports of self-compassion and positive/negative affect were obtained at the start of each of the eight MBCL sessions.Results: Bivariate Autoregressive Latent Trajectory (ALT) modeling showed that, when looking at the interplay between self-compassion and positive/negative affect on a session-to-session basis, no significant reciprocal cross-lagged effects between self-compassion and positive affect were found. Although there were no cross-lagged effects from negative affect to self-compassion, higher levels of self-compassion at each session did predict lower levels of negative affect at the subsequent session (b(SC(t-1),NA(t)) = -0.182, s.e. = 0.076, p =.017).Conclusions: The current study shows that increases in self-compassion are followed by decreases in negative affect in MBCL for depression.

• Mindfulness-based compassionate living
• MBCL
• Recurrent depression
• Self-compassion
• Affect
• Autoregressive latent trajectory (ALT) modeling

• All authors: Avest, M.J. ter; Schuling, R.; Greven, C.U.; Huijbers, M.J.; Wilderjans, T.F.; Spinhoven, P.; Speckens, A.E.M.
• Date: 2021-11-01
• Journal: Behaviour Research and Therapy
• Volume: 146
• DOI: doi:10.1016/j.brat.2021.103946
• Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796721001455?via%...