Bright Nights Community Forum: Self-Compassion as a Resilience Factor in Mental Health

Tue, 12/05/2017 - 8:20am

When: November 14, 2017 at Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room

A fast-growing body of research suggests that self-compassion is strongly linked to mental health. Self-compassion has been consistently associated with lower levels of depression and anxiety, perfectionism, fear of failure, and rumination. Self-compassion is also associated with psychological strengths such as happiness, optimism, wisdom, altruism, and healthy interpersonal relationships. Further, self-compassion has been shown to lead to self-improvement motivation in the face of personal weaknesses, failure, and past moral transgressions. Self-compassion is associated with resilience and adaptive emotion regulation in the general population, and in specific populations, including major depressive disorder, adolescents and young adults, elderly residents in a retirement community, adults with spina bifida, and health care providers. Fortunately, interventions to increase self-compassion have been shown to be effective in both normal and clinical populations. Self-compassion consists of three components: mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. Mindfulness refers to the ability to observe one’s suffering so that one can be can be kind and supportive of oneself, rather than being harshly self-critical. Common humanity promotes the understanding that all human beings are imperfect, and that failure, rejection and adversity in life are part of being human. Ricks Warren, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, leads a discussion on how mental health can be improved through self-compassion and strategies for building self-compassion with a panel of experts including Kate Baker, MD, Clinical Instructor, U-M Department of Psychiatry; Paulette Grotrian, MA, Mindful Self-Compassion and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher; Mika Handelman, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan Psychological Clinic. This event is a partnership with the U-M Depression Center. For more information on the Center, visit their website or contact Stephanie Salazar, 232-0330, or sawaters@umich.edu