Cure for Fear During the COVID-19 Pandemic Process: Self-Compassion

Abstract

COVID-19 not only creates vital physiological effects on human health, but also creates serious mental effects. Increasing death numbers, emerging new variants and uncertainties about the pandemic process cause people to fear. Increasing the individual protective factors during this period will prevent the emergence of fear even in a negative process such as a pandemic. Accordingly, one of the potential concepts that can help protect individuals from the negative effects of COVID-19 is thought to be self-compassion. The self-compassion that an individual will show to himself while going through these difficult times can be the salve for the fear of COVID-19 and the mental problems it causes during this period. In this direction; In this review, it is aimed to reveal the relationship between the fear of COVID-19 and the concepts of self-compassion. PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Google Scholar databases were searched and six studies were found that examined the fear of COVID-19 and the concept of self-compassion together. When studies are examined, it is reported that individuals with high self-compassion levels experience less fear of COVID-19 and reduce mental problems such as depression and anxiety disorder due to fear of COVID-19. The results of this review will raise awareness of mental health professionals that intervention studies focusing on self-compassion should be applied both to patients in clinical settings and to society in terms of preventive mental health.

Keywords

• covid-19
• fear
• self-compassion
• mental health