The effect of acceptance and commitment therapy based psychoeducation program on self compassion levels of university students during the pandemic period

Covid 19 pandemic has had negative effects on the health and well-being of people. It is known that the development of self-compassion and the interventions based on acceptance and commitment therapy, which includes the basic components of self-compassion, benefit people in such processes. In this context, the aim of this research is to examine the effect of acceptance and commitment therapy based online psychoeducation program on the self-compassion levels of university students during the pandemic process. The research was carried out with a 2x3 pre-test-post-test-follow up measured experiment-control group experimental model. The participants of the study consists of 16 (10 women, 6 men) university students who were aged between 19 and 28 and studying at Akdeniz University, Faculty of Education. The data of the study were collected with the Self-Compassion Scale. The experimental group participants trained through 8 session online acceptance and commitment therapy based psychoeducation program through the Zoom application, while control group participants received no intervention. The findings of the study showed that the self-compassion levels of the experimental group participants participating in the online psychoeducation program based on acceptance and commitment therapy increased and this effect maintained permanent during the follow up process one month later. There was no significant difference on the self-compassion levels of the control group participants who were not involved in the experimental intervention. These findings have shown that the online psychoeducation program based on acceptance and commitment therapy was effective in increasing the self-compassion levels of university students who continued their education online during the pandemic process.