the effect of compassion-focused therapy on self-compassion and self-criticism in adolescents with body-image disorder

The current study aimed to determine the effect of compassion-focused therapy on self-compassion and self-criticism in adolescents with body-image disorder. this quasi-experimental study was a pretest-posttest with the control group consisting of 30 adolescents with a body-image disorder based on a purposeful sampling selected and randomly allocated to experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. the experimental group was provided with 10 one-week cft sessions, while the control group did not receive any treatment. at the start of the study, after 10 weeks, all participants were tested using the self-compassion scale and the levels of self-criticism (losc) scale. in addition to descriptive statistics, manova was used to analyze the results and all analyses were carried out using spss-23 software. based on the manova, cft was significantly more effective than non-treatment in reducing self-criticism (p < 0.05). moreover, cft was able to increase the self-compassion levels among individuals with the body-image disorder, significantly (p < 0.05). consequently, we can conclude that the practice of compassion-focused therapy seems to be a promising area of intervention, not only for decreasing self-criticism but also for enhancing self-compassion among adolescents with body-image disorder.