Compassion and Self-Compassion Can Protect Against Adversity

Regarding mental health, we now know that parents, youth, and young adults were some of the most adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, parents with young children reported increased stress, depression, and anxiety levels.

The pandemic also exacerbated existing economic disparities and the stress and adversity associated with such disparities. Lower-income families experienced the greatest increase in pandemic-related stressors and, as a result, increases in anxiety and depression. In this context, we must advance compassionate family policies and promote protective factors that support child and family well-being.

Even before the pandemic, parents, youth, and young adults' anxiety levels increased. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that screening for anxiety problems in children, teens, and adults should become standard in primary care settings.

Sources of increasing stress included higher work demands without increasing salaries and benefits, work-home life balance challenges, healthcare costs, parents' difficulty finding affordable, high-quality child care, and social, political, and environmental problems often amplified by social media.

Housing, food, and health insecurity can be overwhelming for lower-income families. For families of color, there are persistent and pervasive experiences of discrimination. These realities all require substantial structural, systemic, and policy changes that center on the well-being of children and families.

As a psychologist, it sometimes feels like there’s not much I can do about these things. However, I can contribute to change through research and evidence-informed advocacy efforts. We can all advocate for a more compassionate society that offers families safe, stable, and supportive communities and contexts.

My research examined the effects of experiences of stress and adversity on children and families. We know that families experiencing adversity can compromise parents’ emotional and mental well-being. Under these circumstances, it isn't easy to parent effectively or be the best parents we can be. As a result, contexts characterized by stress and adversity negatively affect children.

In two studies, we showed that families with lower income experienced more stress and adversity during the pandemic, that children in families with higher levels of stress demonstrated higher anxiety, depression, and conduct problems, and that some or most of the effects of pandemic-related stress on children were mediated by, or funneled through, parents’ mental health.

In this disheartening picture, some protective factors offer hope. Youth who felt supported by parents and peers and had more social connections during the pandemic fared better. Parents who reported feeling supported and who experienced lower levels of conflict at home had lower levels of depression. This lower level of depression highlights the importance of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and communities for children and parents.

In addition, our relationship with ourselves, and in particular, the extent to which we extend ourselves the same care and kindness we would show to a friend, makes a difference. In numerous studies, this kindness to ourselves, called self-compassion, has improved mental health and well-being.

In a sample of first-time, low-income, pregnant mothers, we related mindfulness and self-compassion to lower depression and anxiety even when considering the accumulation of stress and adversity in their lives.

Further, their levels of self-compassion before the pandemic predicted lower levels or smaller increases in their depression and anxiety during the pandemic. It was protective when life introduced new stress. Prevention programs that promote parents’ self-compassion and social-emotional well-being can, in turn, facilitate effective parenting and support child well-being.

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Structural and systemic changes are critical. Mental health symptoms capture signs of suffering that result from inequitable systems and societies. Simultaneously, it is critical to support children’s, parents’, and families’ well-being by engendering safe, stable, nurturing, and compassionate relationships.

Such relationships, both within and among ourselves, can protect children and parents against the effects of adversity, with potential life-long implications for health and well-being.