perceived stress and somatic symptoms with the mediating role of self-compassion in medical students

Background: the association between perceived stress and somatization symptoms is significant. self-compassion is a valuable coping resource for dealing with negative life situations. we examined the relationship between perceived stress and somatic symptoms with the mediating role of self-compassion in medical students of guilan university of medical sciences. methods: this study was a descriptive correlational study, based on structural equation modeling (sem) on the medical students of guilan university of medical science in the academic year 2022-2023. demographic questionnaires, perceived stress scale, somatic symptom scale-8, and self-compassion scale were used. independent t-test, analysis of variance (anova), tukey’s test, pearson correlation, mann-whitney test, and kruskal–wallis test were used for analysis by sem in lisrel and spss software. results: participants were 200 students with a mean±sd age of 23.46±2.06 years. the mean scores of perceived stress, somatic symptoms, and self-compassion in the sample were 29.90±8.52, 10.59±4.94, and 3±0.63, respectively. there was a significant positive association between perceived stress and somatic symptoms (r=0.299, p<0.001) and a negative association between somatic symptoms and self-compassion (r=-0.490, p<0.001), but no relationship between perceived stress and self-compassion (r=-0.124, p=0.081). the mediating role of self-compassion was confirmed by none of the modified models. conclusion: although increased perceived stress was related to increased somatic symptoms, and increased somatic symptoms were related to decreased self-compassion, self-compassion did not mediate the relationship between perceived stress and somatic symptoms.