Karen Bluth

• PhD
• Faculty Member at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

INTRODUCTION The professional caregiver workforce (nursing assistants and personal care aides) is critical to quality of care and quality of life in nursing home (NH) and assisted living (AL) settings. The work is highly stressful, so improving responses to stress in this workforce could contribute to satisfaction and retention. This research devel...

INTRODUCTION Professional caregivers (nursing assistants and personal care aides) in nursing homes (NH) and assisted living (AL) provide the majority of long‐term residential care for persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Their work is stressful, but until recently, no measures were available to assess stress in this workforce. Us...

Objectives Mindfulness training (MT) has been shown to have substantial therapeutic effects on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptom severity, health-related quality of life, and psychological symptoms at 3 months following an 8-week group MT intervention. This study reports a secondary analysis to examine the long-term trajectory of change in the...

Objectives This open trial aimed to determine the feasibility and acceptability of a modified version of Mindful Self-Compassion for Teens for transgender adolescents and assess changes in suicide ideation and other measures of emotional well-being. As an exploratory measure, we investigated potential moderators of suicide ideation outcomes, such a...

This 4‐year prospective study investigated the dynamic relationship between stress, self‐compassion, and resilience among university students, a population with increasing rates of mental health challenges. Drawing on stress theories, the research explored whether the combination of stress and self‐compassion strengthens resilience over time. A sam...

Care in nursing homes and assisted living communities is largely provided by direct caregivers (nursing assistants [NAs] and personal care aides [PCAs]), who are >50% minoritized, 20% immigrant, 90% female, 87% without a college degree, and often in poverty. The well-being of direct caregivers is critical to quality of care, but research aimed at i...

Background: Adolescents living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) often experience diabetes distress (DD), a construct distinct from depression or anxiety that refers to the negative emotions that arise from living with and managing diabetes. Self-compassion, which involves being open to one's own suffering and treating oneself with the same care one woul...

Introduction Adolescents are experiencing high rates of depressive symptoms, with negative consequences to their long‐term health. Group‐based, mindful self‐compassion programs show promise in mitigating the development of more significant depression in at‐risk adolescents. However, the lack of well‐designed, active control conditions has limited t...

BACKGROUND Adolescents living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) often experience diabetes distress (DD), a construct distinct from depression or anxiety that refers to the negative emotions that arise from living with and managing diabetes. Self-compassion, which involves being open to one’s own suffering and treating oneself with the same care one would...

Due to the psychological toll COVID-19 has had on emerging adults, as well as normative mental health challenges of this developmental period, emerging adults are struggling more than ever with depression and loneliness. The objective of this study was to assess feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary psychosocial outcomes of Embracing Your Lif...

Caregivers of elementary-aged children are instrumental in shaping children’s understanding of and ability to regulate difficult emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, shame). Self-compassion has emerged as a useful skill in promoting adaptive responses to difficult emotions in adults and teens but has been minimally explored in child and family contexts....

Imagine you just got a bad grade on a test. What kind of thoughts would be running through your head? When something difficult like this happens, a lot of us will talk to ourselves in a harsh tone of voice, be very critical, and call ourselves names. Now imagine it were your friend who got a bad grade—what would you say to them? Most people say tha...

Adolescents today are struggling with the normative stressors of this developmental stage which are compounded by the current social and environmental challenges specific to this time in history. Anxiety, depression, and suicide rates have skyrocketed over the last decade; adolescents cite climate change, COVID-19, gun violence, and school shooting...

Positive academic climates are critical to helping students thrive, and kindness innovations might enhance these climates. This conceptual paper’s purpose is to share insights from a consensus building event focused on fostering relationships and knowledge-sharing among an international group of multidisciplinary students, faculty, and staff who ex...

This chapter explores how self-compassion can promote the development of wisdom in adolescents who encounter adversity, from the typical challenges of adolescence to traumatic experience. We hope to demonstrate that youth have the capacity to be wise, particularly if they are self-compassionate in their response to adversity. Evidence is presented...

Karen Bluth’s commentary on Cade Mansfield’s “The Co-Evolution of Meaning-making and Wisdom in Processing and Developmental Time” touches upon the connection between meaning-making and self-compassion and the importance of developmental time in responding to an adverse event. This commentary suggests that the self-compassion required to cope with a...

Context : Burnout remains prevalent among surgical residents. Self-compassion training may serve to improve their well-being. Objective : To evaluate the impact on well-being of a self-compassion program modified for surgical residents. Design : This is a 3-year, mixed-methods study using pre-post surveys and focus groups to identify areas for pr...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of an online self-compassion intervention for transgender adolescents, with the aim of improving mental health. Participants identified as transgender or gender expansive, were between the ages of 13 and 17, and lived in the U.S. or Canada. The emp...

Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) in nursing home (NH) settings experience considerable work-related and personal stress. Self-compassion is a personal resource linked to improved stress coping and may be particularly relevant to health care workers. In this study, we explored NH CNA's experiences with self-compassion training based on their narr...

Objectives In order to provide a broad overview of the body of peer-reviewed literature on self-compassion and close relationships, this scoping review describes how self-compassion relates to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors within the context of current personal relationships between family members, romantic partners, friends, or others referred...

Background/objectives: Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) who work in nursing homes (NHs) face significant work and personal stress. Self-compassion training has been shown to decrease stress postintervention in previous studies among healthcare providers and those in helping professions. This study examines the feasibility, acceptability, and pr...

Objective To assess the feasibility and acceptability of Making Friends with Yourself (MFY): A Mindful Self-Compassion Program for Teens and Young Adults with a sample of college students. A secondary objective was to explore changes in psychosocial outcomes. Participants: Twenty-five students (23 females; mean age 20.35 years) enrolled in the 8-we...

Although depression symptoms are often treated as interchangeable, some symptoms may relate to adolescent life satisfaction more strongly than others. To assess this premise, we first conducted a network analysis on the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) in a large (N = 1,059), cross-sectional sample of community adolescents (age M = 14.72 ± 1.7...

Objective: Early life abuse (ELAb) initiates pathophysiological cascades resulting in long-term maladaptive stress responsivity, hyperalgesia and an increased risk for psychopathology. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is effective in modifying psychological and somatic symptoms; thus, we predicted that MBSR would be particularly efficacio...

Self‐compassion is an adaptive way of self‐relating that entails tending to one's emotional pain with understanding and care. In this article, we propose an intergenerational model explaining how self‐compassion develops in the context of the parent–child relationship. Specifically, we posit that parents who have had supportive experiences with the...

Aim To examine the feasibility and acceptability of a brief self‐compassion intervention for adolescents with type 1 diabetes and disordered eating behaviour. Methods Twenty‐seven adolescents with type 1 diabetes were recruited and randomized to receive the brief (two 2.5‐h sessions) self‐compassion intervention, either in the intervention group (...

Objectives Contemplative abilities including self-compassion, mindfulness, and related constructs such as distress tolerance are associated with adolescent psychological wellbeing. Yet how adolescents vary in contemplative abilities, and how such variations differ as a function of demographics, remains unclear. The present study sought to determine...

We present a series of studies on the development and validation of the Self-Compassion Scale - Youth version (SCS-Y), which is intended for use with early adolescents in middle school. Study 1 (N = 279, Mage = 12.17) describes the selection of 17 items out of a pool of 36 potential items, with three items each representing the subscales of self-ki...

Introduction Adolescents with type 1 diabetes are at a higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders, particularly eating disorders, compared with their healthy peers. In turn, this increases the risk for sub-optimal glycaemic control and life-threatening diabetes-related complications. Despite these increased risks, standard diabetes care does n...

Self-compassion has been identified as a trait that correlates with robust mental health; specifically, less anxiety, depression and stress in both adolescents and adults. However, little is known about the parental and family factors that are associated with adolescent self-compassion that may promote or enhance the development of this stress-buff...

Im folgenden Kapitel verschaffen die Autoren einen Überblick über den aktuellen Forschungsstand zu Selbstmitgefühl in der Jugend. Dazu stellen sie in mehreren Abschnitten Studien zu bestimmten Stichproben (z. B. Risikopopulationen) dar und nehmen Bezug zu assoziierten Konzepten wie psychischer Gesundheit, zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen oder Selbs...

Introduction: Self-compassion, a trait that involves responding to one's difficulties with care and concern, may offer unique stress coping benefits during the challenges of adolescence. Methods: This cross-sectional study used survey data from a large adolescent sample within two U.S. school settings (N=1,057; 65% female; 68% white; mean age 14...

Young adult cancer survivors (YACS) are a vulnerable population that reports high anxiety, social isolation, and feelings of inadequacy after cancer treatment completion. Mindful self-compassion (MSC) provides strategies for coping with suffering. We explored how MSC practices addressed the psychosocial needs of a nationally recruited YACS sample (...

Disentangling the unique associations of self-compassion and mindfulness with adolescent depression has been an empirical challenge. Taking a symptom-level approach to adolescent depression using network analysis can address some of the most common conceptual and psychometric challenges in this area. Under this network analysis framework, some symp...

Identifying central symptoms of adolescent depression could lead to improved theoretical and clinical understanding. We ran a network analysis on adolescent depression symptoms to quantitatively assess whether the most central symptoms converge with previous findings and relate more strongly to a key outcome outside of the network. We conducted a n...

The adolescent developmental stage is characterized by multiple transitions, both physiological and environmental, and physical, cognitive and socioemotional growth that often leads to both challenges and opportunities. Developing coping strategies to contend with these challenges, such as strengthening resilience and being open to new experiences,...

Research on mindfulness interventions with adolescents has burgeoned over the last ten years, and findings have demonstrated increases in overall emotional wellbeing post-intervention. However, little is known about the sex differences in response to mindfulness interventions in this age group. In the present study we examine sex differences in out...

As adolescence can be a stressful developmental stage, the purpose of this study was to determine if a novel mindful self-compassion program would decrease stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety and increase resilience, gratitude, and curiosity/exploration (positive risk-taking), and to ascertain if mindfulness and self-compassion co-varied with...

Purpose: Young adult (YA) cancer survivors report substantial distress, social isolation, and body image concerns that can impede successful reintegration into life years after treatment completion. Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) interventions focus on developing mindfulness and self-compassion for managing distress, hardships, and perceived person...

Adolescence is a challenging developmental period marked with declines in emotional well-being; however, self-compassion has been suggested as a protective factor. This cross-sectional survey study (N = 765, grades 7th to 12th; 53 % female; 4 % Hispanic ethnicity; 64 % White and 21 % Black) examined whether adolescents' self-compassion differed by...

The aim of this study was to determine whether adolescents who were high in self-compassion self-reported different levels of emotional wellbeing than adolescents who were low in self-compassion, and to determine whether those high in self-compassion responded differently under a lab social stressor than those low in self-compassion. In a lab setti...

The aims of this mixed-method pilot study were to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary psychosocial outcomes of “Making Friends with Yourself: A Mindful Self-compassion Program for Teens” (MFY), an adaptation of the adult Mindful Self-compassion program. Thirty-four students age 14–17 were enrolled in this waitlist-controlled c...

Theory suggests that heightening state mindfulness in meditation practice over time increases trait mindfulness, which benefits psychological health. We prospectively examined individual trajectories of state mindfulness in meditation during a mindfulness-based intervention in relation to changes in trait mindfulness and psychological distress. Eac...

In this pilot study, we sought to investigate the effects of a mindfulness intervention for adolescents on a community sample of teens. Specifically, we explored the effects of mindfulness training on emotional well-being outcomes. Also, we examined the relationship between mindfulness and self-compassion at baseline-predicted outcome measures. Thi...

Menstrually related mood disorders (MRMDs) are characterized by the cyclic recurrence of affective and somatic symptoms in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle that result in substantial impairment. Despite the efficacy of SSRIs and a low-dose oral contraceptive, non-response rates are ≥40 %, and the need for a behavioral intervention in this po...

Adolescence is a critical period for intervention with at-risk youth to promote emotional well-being, deter problematic behavior, and prevent the onset of life-long challenges. Despite preliminary evidence supporting mindfulness interventions for at-risk youth, few studies have included implementation details or reported feasibility and acceptance...

Self-compassion has been associated with well-being in adult samples, but has rarely been assessed in adolescents. In this study, 90 students ages 11-18 completed an online survey assessing self-compassion, life satisfaction, perceived stress and positive and negative affect. Findings indicated that older female adolescents had lower self-compassio...

Adolescents today are confronted with the compounded stressors of life in our high-pressured society and the cognitive, physiological, and emotional changes characteristic of this stage of development. To explore ways to promote well-being in this population, mindfulness, defined as paying attention in the moment in an intentional and purposeful wa...

Adolescents today are confronted with the compounded stressors of life in our high-pressured society and the cognitive, physiological, and emotional changes characteristic of this stage of development. To explore ways to promote well-being in this population, mindfulness, defined as paying attention in the moment in an intentional and purposeful wa...

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are at an increased risk for acute and chronic stress compared to parents of children with other developmental disabilities and parents of children without disabilities. It is plausible that the stressors of having a child with ASD affect the couple relationship; however, few researchers have...

Parenting preschoolers can be a challenging endeavor. Yet anecdotal observations indicate that parents who are more mindful may have greater ease in contending with the emotional demands of parenting than parents who are less mindful. Therefore, we hypothesized that parenting effort, defined as the energy involved in deciding on the most effective...

Mindful parenting has been thought to be more effective and less effortful than following a parenting routine. While there is evidence for effectiveness, the lessened effort is largely based on anecdotes. In this study, we created a self-report Parenting Effort Scale for use with already established parent self-report scales of everyday mindfulness...