Efficacy and cost-effectiveness of an ACT and compassion-based intervention for women with breast cancer: study protocol of two randomised controlled trials {1}.

Background: Breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in women worldwide and carries a considerable psychosocial burden. Interventions based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and compassion-based approaches show promise in improving adjustment and quality of life in people with cancer. The Mind programme is an integrative ACT and compassion-based intervention tailored for women with breast cancer, which aims to prepare women for survivorship by promoting psychological flexibility and self-compassion.

The roles of self-compassion and social support on the maternal adjustment to a child's hip dysplasia.

Parenthood can be challenging when facing a child's chronic illness such as developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH). Although social support is known as a protective factor for the caregiver's mental health, the role of self-compassion is less explored. This study, conducted in Portugal, explored whether self-compassion and social support mediate the relationship between mothers' psychological adjustment and perception of their child's illness.

Adolescent girls' body appreciation: influences of compassion and social safeness, and association with disordered eating.

Purpose: Adolescence has been stated as a period in which body image and eating difficulties' have its greatest expression, especially in females. Nonetheless, protective factors, such as body appreciation and compassion, are not thoroughly studied in this developmental stage. The current study hypothesized that competences for self-compassion and receiving others' compassion associate positively with social safeness, and the three variables with body appreciation.

Potential contributing roles of early affiliative memories, social safeness and body appreciation to adolescents' well-being.

Interpersonal and body image-related factors have been associated with adolescents' well-being. Since data on positive body image in adolescence and its relationship with well-being remain scarce, the present study explored the roles of early affiliative memories, social safeness, and body appreciation in adolescents' well-being. Path analysis' results showed that social safeness and body appreciation mediated the relationship between early affiliative memories and physical, psychological and school environment well-being.

The soothing-affiliation system and body appreciation: recollected and present affect.

Attachment and affiliation-related affect has been stated to be a powerful regulator of human development, maturation, well-being and health. Accordingly, as research on positive body image has evolved, data on the association between non-judgmental interpersonal relationships and body appreciation has emerged. The present study sought to explore a model linking memories of early affiliative relationships with body appreciation via higher current social safeness and the experience of positive affect in a sample of Portuguese women aged between 18 and 50 years ( = 286).

Striving as a paradoxical strategy to deal with fears of compassion: impact on disordered eating.

Purpose: Recent literature has documented the relationship between fears of compassion and disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. However, research on the processes underlying this association is still in the early stages. As such, this study tested a mediator model where insecure striving and inflexible eating (i.

Early Parental Eating Messages and Disordered Eating: The Role of Body Shame and Inflexible Eating.

The current study tested a path model that examined the association between early caregiver eating messages (restrictive and pressure to eat) and current disordered eating and whether body image shame and inflexible eating mediate this relationship, in a sample of 433 women aged from 18 to 40. Correlation analyses showed that the recall of restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages is linked to body image shame, inflexible eating and disordered eating. Path analysis results indicated the plausibility of the tested model, which accounted for 70% of the variance of disordered eating.

Body compassion safeguards against the impact of major life events on binge eating.

Body compassion is a fresh construct that incorporates two multidimensional concepts: body image and self-compassion. Although self-compassion has revealed a protective role against body image and eating-related problems (e.g.

Self-to-others and self-to-self relationships: paths to understanding the valence of body image and eating attitudes in emerging adult women.

Purpose: Interpersonal and intrapersonal factors contributing to body appreciation in emerging adult women remain poorly explored. Thus, the present study aimed to test the impact of early memories of warmth and safeness with peers, self-compassion, and social safeness, in body appreciation and in disordered eating attitudes and behaviours.

Methods: A total of 387 women aged between 18 and 25 completed a set of self-report questionnaires.

The relation of early positive emotional memories to women's social safeness: The role of shame and fear of receiving compassion.

Early affiliative experiences play an important role in social and emotional development. Several authors have suggested that early positive experiences may be recorded as memories of warmth and soothing. However, the relationship between such memories and current feelings of social safeness and connectedness remains scarcely studied.

Exploring the paths between self-compassionate attributes and actions, body compassion and disordered eating.

The relationship between self-compassion and well-being and health (e.g. a lower proneness for eating-related disturbances) is well stressed in the literature.

Chronic illness-related cognitive fusion explains the impact of body dissatisfaction and shame on depression symptoms in breast cancer patients.

Breast cancer is linked to psychological distress and mood disorders that are in turn associated with higher psychological dysfunction and decreased breast cancer survival. It is considered that psychological health in breast cancer is considerably affected by body image impairment, which in turn seems to be highly associated with shame. However, the impact of these variables on mental health may not be direct.

Developments on committed action: Validity of the CAQ-8 and analysis of committed action's role in depressive symptomatology in breast cancer patients and healthy individuals.

Committed action, a process of acceptance and commitment therapy's psychological flexibility model, is considered an understudied construct that currently can only be measured by one instrument, the Committed Action Questionnaire (CAQ-8). This study aims at analysing the psychometric properties of the CAQ-8 in healthy individuals and breast cancer patients. This study also aims to explore the specific meditational role of committed action in the well-established relationship between experiential avoidance and depression symptoms.

Development of a measure for the assessment of peer-related positive emotional memories.

Objectives: Previous research has demonstrated a link between early experiences of warmth, safeness, and soothing, and positive feelings, health, and well-being outcomes. Although the impact of positive parent-related early relationships and its posterior recall is well documented, research on the recall of warmth and safeness experiences within early peer relationships remains scarce. In fact, it is considered that the protective role of early positive peer relationships deserves intensive research; however, a specific measure that assesses this construct is still to be created.

Shame and eating psychopathology in Portuguese women: Exploring the roles of self-judgment and fears of receiving compassion.

Shame has been for long associated with the development and maintenance of body image and eating-related difficulties. However, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. Therefore, the current study sought to examine the mechanisms of self-judgment and fears of receiving compassion from others in the association between external shame and disordered eating, while controlling for body mass index (BMI).

Assessing positive emotional memories with peers: The Early Memories of Warmth and Safeness with Peers Scale for adolescents.

Research on the association between early positive relational experiences and later psychosocial adjustment is growing. The quality of peer relationships may have a particularly important effect on adolescents' wellbeing and mental health. The current study aimed at examining a measure of personal emotional memories of peer relationships characterized by warmth, safeness and affection, which occurred in childhood and adolescence (EMWSS-A).

Exploring the effect of external shame on body appreciation among Portuguese young adults: The role of self-compassion.

Studies on body image-related disturbances have recently embraced a fresh and innovative construct: body appreciation. Body appreciation, an aspect of positive body image, defines as the detention of a balanced, affectionate and health-conscious relationship with one's own body's features. Its exploration is considered to be essential to the success of upcoming prevention and intervention programs in the area of body image and eating disorders.

Defensive Responses to Early Memories with Peers: a Possible Pathway to Disordered Eating.

Childhood and early adolescence experiences, specifically those that provide an adulthood enriched with warm and safe memories, are consistently stated in literature as powerful emotional regulators. In contrast, individuals who scarcely recall positive experiences may begin to believe that others see the self as inferior, inadequate and unattractive. In order to cope with a perceived loss of social desirability and achieve other's acceptance, individuals may become submissive, and women, particularly, may resort to the presentation of a perfect body image.

Self-compassion: An adaptive link between early memories and women's quality of life.

Research has emphasized the important role of recalling childhood experiences on adult mental health, and also the benefits of self-compassion on well-being. This study explored self-compassion as a mediator between early memories with family and peers and quality of life, on a wide age range female sample ( N = 645). Path analysis revealed that self-compassion mediated the impact of both types of memories on women's perceived quality of life.

Experiential avoidance versus decentering abilities: the role of different emotional processes on disordered eating.

In modern western societies, the female body is a predominantly used dimension in self and social evaluations. In fact, the perceived discrepancy between one's current and ideal body image may act as a pathogenic phenomenon on women's well-being. Furthermore, significant differences in the tendency to engage in disordered eating attitudes and behaviours have been verified between women sharing similar characteristics and perceptions about body's weight and shape, which suggests  that different emotion regulation processes may be involved in this association.

How can the recall of early affiliative memories with peers influence on disordered eating behaviours?

The present study aimed to explore the role of early affiliative memories with peers on the adoption of disordered eating attitudes and behaviours through the mechanisms of external shame and self-judgment. The sample used in the current study comprised 632 women from the community, aged between 18 and 60 years old.The tested model explained 22 % of eating psychopathology's variance and showed excellent model fit indices.

Understanding the Role of Self-Judgment in the Association between Body Dissatisfaction and Quality of Life on Normal-Weight and Overweight Portuguese Women.

Literature has demonstrated the negative impact of body image dissatisfaction on women's quality of life. Nonetheless, it has been suggested that the relationship between body dissatisfaction and women's well-being is not linear, and that the processes that mediate this association remain unclear. This study aims to clarify the mediator role of self-judgment in the association between negative body image and psychological quality of life, in two groups: normal-weight and overweight women.

Seeking a perfect body look: feeding the pathogenic impact of shame?

Shame feelings often lead individuals to adopt compensatory mechanisms, such as the minimization of the public display or disclosure of mistakes and the active promotion of perfect qualities, conceptualized as perfectionistic self-presentation. Although perfectionism is considered a central characteristic of disordered eating, the investigation on the specific domain of body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation and on its relationship with psychopathology is still scarce. The main aim of the present study was exploring the moderator effect of body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation on the associations of shame with depressive symptomatology, and with eating psychopathology, in a sample of 487 women.