self-compassion: the factor that explains a relationship between perceived social support and emotional self-regulation in psychological well-being of breast cancer survivors

Objective: perceived social support (pss) and emotional self-regulation have customarily been related to greater psychological well-being, but the pathways via which perceived social support and emotional self-regulation increase psychological well-being have not been revealed. we investigated how much self-compassion mediated the association between perceived social support and emotional self-regulation in psychological well-being of breast cancer sufferers. method: a cross-sectional study design was used. participants were recruited from three oncology departments in zanjan, iran. data was collected from breast cancer patients (n = 300). participants completed self-report measures, the short ryff scale psychological well-being (rspwb), emotion regulation questionnaire (erq), multidimensional scale of perceived social support (mspss) and self-compassion scale (scs). pearson correlation coefficient was used to assess association among the study variables and multivariable regression analysis was used to assess linear relationships among predictor variables (emotional self-regulation, perceived social support and self-compassion) and criterion variable (psychological well-being). bootstrapping analyses were used to test the significance on indirect effects. results: bootstrapping analyses revealed significant indirect effects of perceived social support (β = 0.055, se = 0.45, p = 0.049, 0.95 ci: ll = 0.0092, ul = 0.1345) and emotional self-regulation (β = 0.079, se = 0.079, p = 0.004, 0.95 ci: ll = -0.0331, ul = -0.1358) on psychological well-being through self-compassion. conclusion: these findings present new evidence that self-compassion may be a target for psychological interventions attempted at enhancing psychological well-being in cancer populations, particularly breast cancer survivors.