Mental health shame, self-compassion and sleep in UK nursing students: Complete mediation of self-compassion in sleep and mental health.

AIMS: To explore relationships between mental health problems, mental health shame, self-compassion and average length of sleep in UK nursing students. The increasing mental health problems in nursing students may be related to a strong sense of shame they experience for having a mental health problem. Self-compassion has been identified as a protective factor for mental health and shame in other student populations. Further, studies highlight the importance of sleep relating to mental health. DESIGN: A cross-sectional design. METHODS: A convenient sampling of 182 nursing students at a university in the East Midlands completed a paper-based questionnaire regarding these four constructs, from February to April 2019. Correlation, regression and mediation analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Mental health problems were positively related to shame and negatively related to self-compassion and sleep. Mental health shame positively predicted and self-compassion negatively predicted mental health problems: sleep was not a significant predictor of mental health problems. Lastly, self-compassion completely mediated the impacts of sleep on mental health problems (negative relationship between mental health problems and sleep was fully explained by self-compassion). CONCLUSION: The importance of self-compassion was highlighted as it can reduce mental health problems and shame. Self-compassion can protect nursing students from mental distress when they are sleep deprived. IMPACT: Nurses and nursing students are required to work irregular hours (e.g. COVID-19) and mental distress can cause serious consequences in clinical practice. Our findings suggest that nurturing self-compassion can protect their mental health and the negative impacts of sleep deprivation on mental health.

Predicting self-compassion in UK nursing students: Relationships with resilience, engagement, motivation, and mental wellbeing.

Self-compassion, being kind towards oneself, has been identified as a key protective factor of mental health. This is consistent with students' experiences in the study of nursing, which attracts many students in the United Kingdom. Despite the importance of self-compassion, knowledge in how to enhance self-compassion is under-researched: approaches commonly entail meditative exercises. To suggest alternative approaches, relationships between self-compassion and more established constructs need to be appraised. Accordingly, this study evaluated predictors of self-compassion, examining its relationships with more established constructs examined in other healthcare student populations: resilience, engagement, motivation and mental well-being. An opportunity sample of 182 UK nursing students at a university in East Midlands completed self-report measures about these constructs. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted. Self-compassion was positively related to resilience, engagement, intrinsic motivation and mental well-being, while negatively related to amotivation. Resilience and mental well-being were identified as significant predictors of self-compassion. As resilience and mental well-being are relatively familiar to many nursing lecturers and students, educators can incorporate a self-compassion component into the existing resilience training and/or mental well-being practices.