Does compassion focused therapy can increase self-compassion and optimism in people with diabetes mellitus?

Abstract

Optimism can be a great force possessed by human beings in facing a lot of pressures of life. An optimistic individual always expects good things to happen in life. Self-compassion is the ability to express affection and warmth to ourselves as we show others and be able to accept failure and suffering by not judging ourselves. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of self-compassion in increasing optimism in patients with diabetes mellitus. This research is a quantitative study with an experimental model. The design was pretest-posttest control group by giving treatment in the experimental group in the form of compassion focused therapy (CFT) interventions. Subjects were 12 patients with diabetes mellitus who were divided into two groups: experimental and control groups with 6 subjects in each group. Self-compassion was measured using a self-compassion scale with 26 items. Optimism was measured using the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOTR), which consists of 10 items. Analysis of the data using non-parametric test Kendall’s tau-b, Wilcoxon, and Mann Whitney test. The results showed that self-compassion had a positive and strong effect on optimism and compassion focused therapy was able to increase self-compassion in the experimental group, therefore the increase in self-compassion was able to increase optimism