self-compassion reduces the destructive effects of perceived stress on psychological well-being and self-care behaviors: results from type ii diabetes mellitus patients

Objective: this study investigated the mediating role of self-compassion in the relationship of perceived stress with physiological well-being and self-care behaviors among patients suffering from type ii diabetes mellitus (t2dm). materials and methods: in this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 369 patients with t2dm were selected through purposive and consecutive sampling from the cities of rasht and rezvanshahr (northern iran) in 2020-21. the participants completed the perceived stress scale (pss-4), summary of diabetes self-care activities (sdsca) questionnaire, ryff's scale of psychological well-being (rspwb), and self-compassion scale (scs-sf). the data were processed through structural equation modeling (sem) in amos-24. bootstrapping was carried out in macro to analyze the mediating relationships. results: the perceived stress had a negative and significant correlation with self-compassion (r= -0.456), psychological well-being (r= -0.699), and self-care behaviors (r= -0.671) (for all cases p< 0.01). in addition, self-compassion had a positive and significant relationship with psychological well-being (r= 0.760) and selfcare behaviors (r= 0.657) (p< 0.01). the modified structural model had the desired fitting with the collected data (cfi= 0.955, rmsea= 0.079, χ 2/df= 2.842). following the bootstrapping analysis, self-compassion significantly mediates the relationship between perceived stress, psychological well-being (p< 0.0001), and self-care behaviors (p< 0.0001). conclusion: self-compassion can serve as a shield against and reduce the destructive effects of stress on the psychological well-being and self-care behaviors of diabetic patients. the beneficial effects of self-compassion can be used in diabetic psychotherapy protocols to improve psychological well-being and self-care behaviors.