Exploring Children’s Experiences in a Targeted Compassion-Based Intervention

Psychologists have become increasingly interested in the concept of compassion and its role in promoting psychosocial wellbeing. As individuals experience compassion for others, compassion from others, and self-compassion, they set in motion a series of physiological processes that support emotion-regulation and prosocial interactions. There has also been a rise in the development of individual and group interventions that guide participants to develop greater compassion for the purposes of improving their mental health, prosocial behaviors, and physiological responses to stress. Meta-analytic findings of compassion-based interventions with adults show significant, moderate effects on compassion, self-compassion, mindfulness, depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and wellbeing. Preliminary evidence suggests compassion-based, group interventions may be effective targeted strategies for supporting youth who are at-risk for developing internalizing disorders. In this dissertation, I present a study examining the experiences of five fourth-grade students in a compassion-based, group intervention targeting internalizing symptoms. Guided by interpretive phenomenological analysis, semi- structured interviews were used to examine participants’ emotional experiences of the intervention and to elicit participant feedback on the helpfulness and usefulness of the intervention. Children’s artwork from the intervention was analyzed collaboratively to gather detailed descriptions of participants’ thoughts and emotional states during the creation and presentation of their art projects. Finally, audio recordings of group sessions were used to gather information on children’s interactions and field notes were analyzed to examine my own experience of facilitating the intervention