Gentle voices within harsh environments. A longitudinal study focused on childhood adversity, self-compassion, depression and anxiety

Childhood adversity (CA) is the most important environmental risk factor for depression and anxiety. Still, protective factors may have important implications for these relationships. Supporting this view, self-compassion has been recently singled out, but direct support for its mediating role in these relationships is surprisingly scant and mostly cross-sectional. Thus, we conducted a short-term longitudinal study to (1) investigate associations between these variables and (2) test the mediating role of self-compassion in the association between CA and both depressive and anxiety symptoms. Moreover, we probed alternative models in which we (3) explored the mediating role of depressive and anxiety symptoms in the association between CA and self-compassion. Participants (N = 166; m = 29.18 years old, SD = 9.66) were recruited online and completed measures across three different timepoints. We investigated study objectives using Pearson correlations and structural equation modeling and performed all analyses in STATA. CA, self-compassion, and depressive and anxiety symptoms were associated both within and across timepoints. Cross-sectional and longitudinal models indicated that self-compassion mediated the association between CA and both depressive and anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, exploratory analyses indicated that these symptoms mediated the association between CA and self-compassion. These findings offer support for self-compassion as a potential mechanism in the association between CA and depressive and anxiety symptoms and draw attention to alternative models. In addition, they advance current knowledge to contribute to an in-depth understanding of these complex relationships and to their practical implications for treatments.