Mind over market: A Comparison of UK Psychology students and business students on self-compassion, compassion for others, depression and anxiety.

Mind over market: A Comparison of UK Psychology students and business students on self-compassion, compassion for others, depression and anxiety.

Psychology

Ciara Beavers

2024

Dr John Galvin

Compassion has been an increasingly studied topic within psychology, found to have psychological and wellbeing benefits (Neff, 2015; Macbeth & Gumley, 2012) as well as on motivation for healthcare professionals (Kotera et al., 2021). Thus, this study aimed to understand whether the reported benefits of compassion on motivation and mental health applied to undergraduate Psychology students, in comparison to undergraduate Business students. Participants were given the self-compassion scale, as well as the compassion for others scale (Pommier et al., 2019; Raes et al., 2011), as well as the PHQ-9 (Koneke et al., 2001) and the GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006), as well as their degree choice and career aspirations. Scores on the PHQ (depression), as well as compassion for others, significantly differed by degree choice, with depression scores being higher for business students, but not career choice. This lends support for the ‘wounded healer’ hypothesis as to motivation for studying psychology, potentially having implications at university and in the workplace.

psychology, compassion, mental health, degree choice, careers, students, self-compassion, compassion for others, depression, anxiety, business, clinical psychology