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Healing from Racism with Compassion Meditation: Effects of Coping on Mental Health

This study examines whether Compassion Meditation (CM) can help ethnic minority college students heal from race-related stress. The present study hypothesized that through participation in a CM intervention, the augmentation of adaptive coping strategies (i.e., self-compassion) and the reduction of maladaptive coping strategies (i.e., internalization, defined as self-blame, and detachment, defined as social isolation) would reduce depression and PTSD. Participants (N = 9) participated in an 8-session weekly CM intervention and completed three questionnaires at the beginning, middle, and end of the intervention. Results demonstrated that increasing self-compassion predicted decreases in depression, and that reducing coping via detachment predicted decreases in PTSD. In addition, all nine participants met the clinical cutoff for major depression at pre-intervention, but only five remained above the cutoff point by post-intervention. Implications for future CM interventions, research, and prevention strategies are discussed.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cmc_theses-2717
Date01 January 2017
CreatorsChan, Courtney
PublisherScholarship @ Claremont
Source SetsClaremont Colleges
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceCMC Senior Theses
Rights© 2017 Courtney P Chan, default

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