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

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 (bSC(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.