Self- compassion can help students

Adapted from Human Givens Vol 29 No 1 2022

Over two thirds of university students don’t get enough sleep and this has knock on adverse effects on cognitive function and mental health.

Students have been found to get very stressed and blame themselves for poor academic performance. This leads to anxiety, depression and poor sleep quality. Researchers wanted to find out if treating yourself with kindness and understanding when you are having difficulties improves sleep quality.

Almost 200 students in the University of Manitoba completed questionnaires measuring self- compassion, sleep quality, and emotional regulation.

The researchers found that self- blame was the most important factor which affected low- self compassion. This also affected sleep quality the most. Students who avoided self- blame were also less likely to resort to other unhelpful cognitive strategies when under stress, such as denial, rumination, not making an action plan, catastrophising and assigning negative judgements.