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The Role of Mindfulness and Loving-Kindness Meditation in Cultivating Self-Compassion and Other-Focused Concern in Health Care Professionals

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Abstract

Therapists and other health professionals might benefit from interventions that increase their self-compassion and other-focused concern since these may strengthen their relationships with clients, reduce the chances of empathetic distress fatigue and burnout and increase their well-being. This article aimed to review the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) and loving-kindness mediation (LKM) in cultivating clinicians’ self-compassion and other-focused concern. Despite methodological limitations, the studies reviewed offer some support to the hypothesis that MBIs can increase self-compassion in health professionals, but provide a more mixed picture with regard to MBIs’ affect on other-focused concern. The latter finding may in part be due to ceiling effects; therefore future research, employing more sensitive measures, would be beneficial. Turning to LKM, there is encouraging preliminary evidence from non-clinician samples that LKM, or courses including LKM and related practices, can increase self-compassion and other-focused concern. As well as extending the LKM evidence base to health professionals and using more robust, large-scale designs, future research could usefully seek to identify the characteristics of people who find LKM challenging and the supports necessary to teach them LKM safely.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers, and especially for the clarification of the differences between mindfulness and compassion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology, Canterbury Christ Church University, Salomons Campus, Broomhill Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN3 0TG, UK

    Fergal W. Jones

  2. Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK

    Inga Boellinghaus

  3. South London and Maudsley and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts, London, UK

    Jane Hutton

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  1. Inga Boellinghaus
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Correspondence to Fergal W. Jones.

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Boellinghaus, I., Jones, F.W. & Hutton, J. The Role of Mindfulness and Loving-Kindness Meditation in Cultivating Self-Compassion and Other-Focused Concern in Health Care Professionals. Mindfulness 5, 129–138 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-012-0158-6

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