The effectiveness of smartphone compassion training on stress among Swedish university students: A pilot randomized trial.

Published 2020-11-27 From Journal of Clinical Psychology 7 authors

Attribution

This is the abstract and citation. Full text lives at Semantic Scholar — we link out rather than host. All credit to the authors and Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Abstract

Verbatim from Semantic Scholar. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of a 6-week smartphone compassion training intervention on mental health. METHOD Fifty-seven Swedish university students (mean age = 25, SD = 5) reporting high levels of stress were randomized to compassion training (n = 23), mindfulness (n = 19), or waitlist (n = 15). RESULT Multilevel models indicated that both compassion and mindfulness training increased self-compassion compared to the waitlist, while only compassion significantly reduced stress. Between-group effect sizes for compassion compared to waitlist were large for both self-compassion (d = 1.61) and stress (d = 0.94). Compassion and mindfulness did not differ significantly, but effect sizes were in favor of compassion. Secondary outcomes indicated positive effects on emotional awareness, while no effect was found for global psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that compassion training via a smartphone application can improve self-compassion and reduce stress among university students. Future studies in larger clinical samples are warranted.

Authors

C. Andersson
K. Bergsten
P. Lilliengren
Kajsa Norbäck
K. Rask
S. Einhorn
W. Osika

Keywords

Medicine
Psychology

Citation: C. Andersson, K. Bergsten, P. Lilliengren , et al. (2020). The effectiveness of smartphone compassion training on stress among Swedish university students: A pilot randomized trial.. Journal of Clinical Psychology. Semantic Scholar ID 8b9d4f042e0a4ec345c5320271883fd0c783d0f2. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23092 ↗