Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 38, Issue 7, July 2014, Pages 1180-1190
Child Abuse & Neglect

The mediating role of self-compassion in the relationship between victimization and psychological maladjustment in a sample of adolescents

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.04.005Get rights and content

Abstract

The objectives of the present study were to analyze the relationship between victimization and psychological maladjustment in adolescents and the role of self-compassion as a mediator in this relationship. The sample was composed of 109 adolescents aged from 15 to 18 years old with poor school performance. The participants filled out a battery of questionnaires made up of: a socio-demographic data questionnaire; the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ); the Youth Self-Report (YSR); and the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS). Results indicated that victimization was positively associated with psychological maladjustment. Moreover, adolescents reporting poly-victimization showed significantly higher level of psychological maladjustment and different types of victimization show different effects on adolescents’ psychological maladjustment. Self-compassion partially mediated the relationship between victimization and psychological maladjustment and reduced negative consequences in adolescents who reported having been victimized. Adolescence is a time of development and search for identity in which strengthening personal protective factors could help overcome any traumas experienced. Therefore, developing self-compassion in adolescence could be a good way to help young people recover from bad experiences and protect themselves against future negative experiences. As self-compassion can be improved with practice it could be included in adolescent intervention and prevention programs.

Introduction

Exposure to violence has been defined broadly and includes both direct exposure and indirect exposure (i.e., witnessing a violent situation; Buka, Stichick, Birdthistle, & Earls, 2001). Research has clearly shown that violence exerted on a person disrupts the victim's individual, family, and social functioning in several ways (Buka et al., 2001). Thus, victimization is associated with psychopathological symptomatology, and although there are many forms of victimization, they all have the potential to disrupt the developmental process (Boney-McCoy & Finkelhor, 1995).

The consequences of victimization can become apparent in the short, medium, or long term and affect all areas of children's development, which places them at a high risk of developing adjustment problems and psychopathologies (Alvarez-Lister et al., 2013, Manly et al., 2001, Stouthamer-Loeber et al., 2001, Teisl and Cicchetti, 2008). Moreover, many studies have associated different types of child victimization (i.e., physical, psychological, sexual abuse, neglect, peer victimization) with psychological maladjustment including depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, behavior problems, social relationship problems, substance abuse, suicide attempts, adult criminality, and delinquency and serious psychiatric disorders in childhood and adulthood (i.e., Cerezo and Frías, 1994, Cerezo and Vera, 2004, Cicchetti et al., 2010, Ford et al., 2010, Hanish and Guerra, 2002, Herrenkohl and Herrenkohl, 2007, Hinduja and Patchin, 2010, Teisl and Cicchetti, 2008). In short, victimization can cause imbalances in mental health and negatively affect different aspects of an individual's life.

One of the consequences of victimization is poor school performance. Several studies have indicated that maltreated children and adolescents under-achieve intellectually and academically (Shonk & Cicchetti, 2001). Victimization affects or impairs the cognitive development of those who have suffered it; the effects of exposure to violence have been demonstrated in the areas of intelligence and reading ability (Delaney-Black et al., 2002), academic achievement, motivation, and commitment to learning (Hoglund, 2007).

Children exposed to child physical and sexual abuse are consistently found to be higher on both internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Trickett & McBride-Chang, 1995). Linkages between distress and disorder in children and exposure to neighborhood violence have also been established (Osofsky, Wewers, Hann, & Fick, 1993). Peer victimization has been related to internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Storch, Milsom, DeBraganza, Lewin, Geffken, Silverstein, 2006).

Most children experienced several types of victimization rather than just one. The concept of polyvictimization was introduced by Finkelhor, Ormrod, and Turner (2007a) who argued that most of the literature on child victimization focused on separate categories of experiences (e.g., sexual abuse, physical abuse, bullying, community violence), whereas the norm was exposure to different types of victimization, with an average of 2.63 categories per child (Finkelhor, Hamby, Omrod, & Turner, 2005). Investigating isolated categories of victimization can create a risk of overestimating the impact of one single category or underestimating the full impact of victimization experienced by children (Turner, Finkelhor, & Ormrod, 2006). Finkelhor and collaborators evaluated 34 specific types of victimization and found that children who had experienced polyvictimization tended to have more serious traumatic symptoms and behavior problems than those who had experienced fewer types or had not been victimized (Finkelhor et al., 2007b, Turner et al., 2010). Also, many of those who had been victimized on one single occasion reported that they had been polyvictimized (Finkelhor et al., 2007b). In fact, research has shown that being victimized in childhood seems to be a risk factor for suffering multiple victimization (Cuevas et al., 2010, Finkelhor et al., 2007c) and increases the probability of revictimization in adulthood (Desai et al., 2002, Doll et al., 2004, Widom et al., 2008).

However, child victimization and its consequences are complex phenomena; not all victims manifest the same problems or to the same extent as the impact can be compounded or buffered depending on multiple variables (Cerezo, 1995). It is necessary to identify protective factors which reduce the impact of stressful events in adolescence and help young people to better adjust psychologically (Compas, Hinden, & Gerhardt, 1995). One of the objectives of this study was to take a further step beyond the documented relationship between victimization and psychological maladjustment (Alvarez-Lister et al., 2013) by examining the role of self-compassion as a possible protective factor.

Self-compassion is close to the wider concept of compassion which aims to reduce/ease others’ suffering, through patience, kindness, and understanding and recognize that all humans are imperfect and make mistakes. The central aspect of the concept of self-compassion would be to treat oneself well in times of difficulty (Neff, 2003a). Therefore, having compassion for oneself is no different from having compassion for others. Acknowledging that suffering, failure, and inadequacies are part of the human condition allows individuals to relate their own experiences to those of others. Self-compassion reduces self-pity: over-identification and ego-centric feelings, associated with disconnection from others. Thus, individuals can perceive their own difficulties/feelings as something to be shared, thereby increasing feelings of interconnectedness (Neff, 2003a).

Widening the perspective of personal experience allows individuals to see their own emotional suffering more clearly. This compassionate attitude toward oneself implies a balanced mental perspective which is known as ‘mindfulness’ (Bennett-Goleman, 2001, Brown and Ryan, 2003, Langer, 2005, Wallace and Shapiro, 2006). Mindfulness is a receptive mental state where one observes one's own thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judging or trying to change them, but without avoiding or ignoring them either (Bishop et al., 2004, Segal et al., 2002, Shapiro and Schwartz, 2000). Fully experiencing self-compassion involves experiencing full attention. Consequently, self-compassionate individuals do not repress or avoid painful feelings; they acknowledge and feel compassion for them, without over-identifying with their feelings (Neff, 2003a).

Self-compassion can be an effective emotional regulation strategy as it enables emotional pain to be processed and accepted by paying full attention to thoughts and feelings, treating them with understanding (Neff, 2004). Thus, in times of suffering, self-compassion helps transform negative emotions into a more positive state and facilitates acting toward oneself and/or one's environment more effectively (Folkman and Moskowitz, 2000, Isen, 2000, Roemer et al., 2009). According to Fredrickson (2001), positive emotions cause changes in cognitive activity and subsequent changes in behavior which help build personal resources to cope with problematic situations. Furthermore, this is associated with a lower level of negative thoughts and emotions, and of pessimistic/critical perceptions (Neff, 2003a).

Because self-compassion can transform self-affect from negative to positive, it may provide some of the psychological benefits associated with high self-esteem but fewer of the drawbacks. Indeed, some authors have argued that an over-emphasis on evaluating and liking oneself may lead to narcissism, self-centeredness, lack of concern for others, prejudice, and violence toward those perceived as a threat to the ego (Aberson et al., 2000, Baumeister et al., 2000). In some individuals high self-esteem may be associated with an exaggerated or inaccurate self-concept, making self-improvement difficult (Neff & Lamb, 2009). These individuals tend to reject negative feedback as unreliable or biased and either do not think their shortcomings are important or else attribute them to external causes (Crocker & Park, 2004), thus taking less responsibility for their own wrongdoings (Persinger, 2012). With self-compassion, however, one can experience positive emotions toward oneself without having to protect one's self-concept (Neff, 2003a). Indeed, self-compassion is not based on self-evaluation or comparison with others, and it is not based on achieving ideal standards; it circumvents this process, focusing instead on kindness/understanding toward oneself and the recognition of one's common humanity, thus minimizing the distortion of the self-concept (Persinger, 2012).

Self-compassion has been linked to other indicators of healthy psychological functioning. Neff, Hsieh, and Dejitthirat (2005) reported that it was positively associated with adaptive coping strategies. It could, therefore, be described as a protective factor in the face of adversity. Protective factors are those resources pertaining to individuals, their environment, or the interaction between both, which buffer the impact of stressful events, altering or reverting the prediction of negative results (Masten, Cutuli, Herbers, & Reed, 2009). These factors do not necessarily eliminate the stressful event but allow the problem to be interpreted in a new context. According to Neff, 2003a, Neff, 2003b, self-compassion may be an adaptive process that increases psychological resilience and well-being. It is negatively associated with self-criticism, fear of failure, anxiety, and depression (Neff and Vonk, 2009, Raes, 2010, Raes, 2011, Shapira and Mongrain, 2010, Terry et al., 2012, Ying, 2009), and positively associated with life satisfaction, optimism, happiness, and positive affect (Neff et al., 2007, Shapira and Mongrain, 2010), social connectedness (Neff & McGehee, 2010), emotional intelligence, and self-acceptance (Neff, 2003b). Gilbert (2005) suggests that self-compassion improves well-being because it helps individuals feel cared for, connected, and calm.

Victimization, in particular childhood maltreatment, has been associated with overall emotion dysregulation (Gratz, Tull, Baruch, Bornovalova, & Lejuez, 2008). The development of self-compassion, as an effective emotion regulation strategy, can be impaired in those victims. In fact, Vettese, Dyer, Ly, and Wekerle (2011) observed that self-compassion mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment severity and later emotion dysregulation and many of the psychological disorders involve maladaptive emotion regulation (Werner & Gross, 2010). Although higher levels of childhood emotional abuse and neglect and physical abuse have been found to be associated with lower self-compassion (Tanaka, Wekerle, Schmuck, & Paglia-Boak, 2011), self-compassion, nonetheless, can be beneficial as a protective factor in reducing the impact of many adverse situations, such as victimization.

The present study had two objectives. First, it sought to analyze the relationship between self-reported victimization and psychological maladjustment in adolescents. Based on previous research, it was predicted that victimization would be associated with psychological maladjustment. As one of the consequences of victimization in adolescence is poor school performance, a higher rate of victimization was expected in a group with this characteristic. Consequently, we selected a population with poor school performance from communities with social problems to maximize the probability of assessing individuals with victimization experiences.

Second, this study sought to explore the role of self-compassion as a potential mediator between victimization and its related psychological consequences to determine if it was a protective factor in the psychological maladjustment of victimized adolescents. Our specific hypotheses were that higher levels of victimization would be negatively associated with self-compassion and that self-compassion would be negatively associated with psychological maladjustment; therefore, those victimized youth with higher self-compassion scores would report lower levels of psychological maladjustment.

Section snippets

Participants

The study sample was composed of adolescents with poor school performance completing an Initial Professional Qualification Program (PCPI) in public high schools in the province of Valencia, Spain. These programs offer an alternative to students at risk of dropping out of school without obtaining the Compulsory Secondary Education Diploma. Adolescents from day care centers for minors in the same area also participated; their school performance was poorer than expected for their age and the

Results

Results are presented in terms of our research hypotheses. First, we expected to find a positive relationship between victimization and psychological maladjustment, i.e. the more types of victimization reported, the more psychological maladjustment score the participants would have. Secondly, it was expected that a higher level of victimization would be negatively associated with self-compassion and that self-compassion would be negatively associated with psychological maladjustment. Finally,

Discussion

The objectives of our study were to examine the relationship between victimization and psychological maladjustment and the possible mediation of self-compassion in this relationship. The results for the first research objective support our hypothesis. Furthermore, the more types of victimization experienced, the stronger this relationship, which indicates that cumulative victimization experiences are a risk factor for psychological maladjustment. Indeed, although the psychological maladjustment

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    This research was presented as Master's degree project by the first author in University of Valencia, Spain.

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