Cultivating Swa-Karuṇā: Reducing Mental Distress with Compassion

Abstract

Self-Compassion, known as ‘Swa-karuṇā’ in the Indian Cultural Context, is a spiritual concept in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The significance of karuṇā is widely seen in ancient Indian writings like Bhagwad Geeta, Upanishads, etc (Sengupta & Saxena, 2024). As Buddha mentions, “The entire world deserves self-love and compassion and you are no different than the world”, which means that all living beings, including ourselves, need love, care, and compassion to live a fulfilling life (Pikörn, 2024). In this study, the researchers tried to design an intervention on an idea of self-compassion and test its efficacy for reducing mental health distress, like stress, depression and anxiety. Employing quasi-experimental design, the study involved 85 college students, with 45 participants in control group and 40 in an experimental group. Self-compassion intervention was conducted for seven days, with each session lasting one hour. This activity-based intervention integrates principles from second and third-wave therapies to enhance participants’ self-compassion. Results of the Mann-Whitney U test indicate a notably increase in Self-Compassion for the Experimental Group as compared to the Control group (effect size- 0.443). This improvement in Self-compassion was found to reduce depression (0.839), anxiety (0.681) and stress (0.844) in the experimental group as compared to control group. Finally, this research contributes to the body of confirmation advocating for the application of interventions based on self-compassion in promoting mental well-being.