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Be a hero, be your own best friend: a self-compassion-based PsyCap intervention improves PhD students’ well-being

Solms, Luisa, van den Heuvel, Machteld, Nevicka, Barbara, Homan, Astrid C.·2025·Higher Education
DOI 10.1007/s10734-024-01257-3
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Abstract

Growing research evidence points towards a mental health crisis in PhD students. High-quality support services for PhD students are scarce as is research on interventions. Inspired by Conservation of Resources theory, we introduce a novel type of PsyCap intervention—a self-compassion-based PsyCap training—that aims to improve PhD students’ well-being (i.e., in terms of reducing work pressure and increasing positive affect and support seeking) through PsyCap and self-compassion. 115 PhD students in the Netherlands were randomized to a self-compassion-based PsyCap intervention, a PsyCap-only intervention, or a wait-list control group. Results indicated that the self-compassion-based PsyCap intervention increased self-compassion, reduced work pressure, and increased support seeking in the short term following the intervention. The PsyCap-only intervention increased psychological capital and reduced work pressure in the short term. Notably, increase in self-compassion was a key mechanism through which participants of the self-compassion-based PsyCap intervention, but not the PsyCap-only intervention, experienced improvements in all well-being outcomes over the longer term. Unexpectedly, the self-compassion-based PsyCap intervention increased psychological capital only at follow-up via self-compassion. This study provides initial evidence that developing PsyCap, alongside self-compassion, may take longer but benefits PhD students’ well-being and does so more than developing PsyCap alone.

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Metadata

Authors
Solms, L., van den Heuvel, M., Nevicka, B., & Homan, A. C.
ORCID
Solms, Luisa
Venue
Higher Education
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2024-07-11
Volume
89
Issue
4
Pages
969-999
ISSN
  • 0018-1560
  • 1573-174X
DOI
10.1007/s10734-024-01257-3
Cited by
15
References
14
Language
en
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Solms, L., van den Heuvel, M., Nevicka, B., & Homan, A. C. (2025). Be a hero, be your own best friend: a self-compassion-based PsyCap intervention improves PhD students’ well-being. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01257-3