Belief-in-change of negative emotions mediates the relationship between self-compassion and youth mental health: evidence from a three-wave study

Evidence increasingly supports the mental health benefits of self-compassion, yet longitudinal research on how it links to mental health remains limited. This study aimed to explore how mindsets about negative emotions—beliefs about whether negative emotions can change—might explain the prospective relationship between self-compassion and youth mental health outcomes. A longitudinal survey was conducted annually over three years with 719 secondary school students (mean age: 14.65, SD: 0.72). Mediation models were tested with self-compassion at T1 as the independent variable, negative emotion mindset at T2 as the mediator, and depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction at T3 as the dependent variables. Alternative mediation models, with negative emotion mindset at T1 as the independent variable and self-compassion at T2 as the mediator, were also examined to confirm the hypothesized direction of mediation. All models controlled for age, sex, socioeconomic status, and baseline measurements of the mediator and dependent variables. The negative emotion mindset at T2 robustly mediated the longitudinal associations between self-compassion at T1 and depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction at T3 (95% bootstrapping confidence interval = [-1.06, − 0.13], [-1.05, − 0.12], [0.002, 0.11], respectively). The alternative mediation models were all non-significant, supporting the directional pathway positioning negative emotion mindset as a potential cognitive mechanism linking self-compassion to subsequent mental health. This study suggests that a belief in the malleability of negative emotions is likely a key mechanism underlying the longitudinal link between self-compassion and youth well-being, offering significant implications for research and the design of targeted youth mental health interventions.