Self-Compassion and Psychological Health of Parents: A Meta-Analysis Focused on Some Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Abstract

Parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) may face various psychological problems and experience parenting stress because of the nature of these disorders. Parents' psychological distress and high levels of parenting stress have a negative impact on their well-being. In addition, recent studies on the buffering effect of self-compassion related with psychological difficulties have also attracted attention. At this point, this study aims to carry out a meta-analytic review of studies examining the association between self-compassion and psychological distress, parenting stress, and well-being. Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and EBSCOHost (APA PsycArticles, MEDLINE, TR Index, ERIC) electronic databases were searched in November 2023. Studies were included if they were quantitative and included parents of children with NDDs as the study population. As a result, 131 studies were obtained. After the duplicate studies were removed and evaluated according to the inclusion criteria, n = 15 were included. The random effects model was used to obtain the pooled effect sizes. The results showed that there was a large, negative, and significant relationship between self-compassion and parental depression score and parenting stress; a moderate, negative, and significant relationship between self-compassion and parental anxiety score; and a large, positive, and significant relationship between self-compassion and parental well-being. According to these findings, it is important to observe and measure the level of self-compassion for the well-being of parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, increasing self-compassion in parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders may be a protective factor for the psychological health of these parents.