Piloting a self-compassion program to promote physical and psychological wellbeing in youth with T1D

Investigators: Amy Finlay-Jones, Keely Bebbington, Elizabeth Davis, Ashleigh Lin

Project team members: Megan Ansell, Asha Parkinson

This pilot study aims to determine if self-compassion training has the capacity to improve psychological resilience amongst adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes.

Project description

Adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are at greater risk for poor mental health outcomes, relative to their peers without T1D. In turn, poor mental health can undermine self-management and contribute to poorer clinical outcomes. As a result, programs designed to promote resilience and improve psychological wellbeing are a priority for T1D research. The Making Friends with Yourself (MFY) program is a strengths-based intervention which aims to help young people be kinder to themselves through self-compassion training.  Self-compassion training has been shown to successfully reduce diabetes-related distress, depression and improve metabolic outcomes in adults with T1D. However, to date the efficacy and acceptability of this intervention for adolescents with T1D is unknown. Theaim of this project is to determine the capacity of a self-compassion program to improve psychological resilience and promote health outcomes in adolescents with T1D.

Funding

Children’s Diabetes Centre Seeding Grant