Self-compassion, psychological distress, and mental well-being in a predominantly young student sample: Cross-sectional associations and continuous interaction analysis

This study examined the cross-sectional associations of self-compassion and psychological distress with mental well-being in a predominantly young student sample and tested whether self-compassion modifies the association between distress and well-being. The dual-continua framework guided the simultaneous consideration of distress and positive mental health. Participants (N = 278) completed the Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS-SF), General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS). The principal analysis used mean-centred continuous predictors in hierarchical multiple regression, followed by simple-slopes and Johnson-Neyman analyses. Heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors and sensitivity analyses were used to examine robustness. Secondary analyses comprised a median-split ANOVA examining categorical main and interaction effects and stratified Spearman correlations estimating the self-compassion-well-being association within distress groups. Higher self-compassion was associated with greater well-being, B = 0.230, 95% CI [0.126, 0.334], p < .001, whereas greater distress was associated with lower well-being, B = -1.450, 95% CI [-1.685, -1.214], p < .001. The continuous interaction was small, B = -0.028, 95% CI [-0.055, -0.001], ΔR² = .008, p = .039. The negative coefficient indicated that the positive self-compassion-well-being association weakened as distress increased and ran counter to the hypothesised protective buffering effect. The interaction was also sensitive to influential-case exclusions, alternative GHQ-12 scoring, and bootstrap estimation, while the secondary median-split ANOVA interaction was non-significant, p = .875. Higher self-compassion and lower psychological distress were independently associated with greater well-being. The small, specification-sensitive interaction provided no evidence of the hypothesised protective buffering effect. Parallel assessment of distress and well-being is warranted, while causal, clinical, and structural conclusions require longitudinal, experimental, and latent-variable research.