Caring for others without caring for oneself is associated with lower levels of well-being and may not be sustainable, a new study found.

“Many people, especially caregivers, educators, health professionals, parents and activists, may be very caring toward others while being harsh or neglectful toward themselves. Our findings suggest that this imbalance may be linked to poorer mental health,” said Bassam Khoury, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at the McGill University Faculty of Education and lead author of the study.

“Self-compassion may help people regulate difficult emotions, reduce self-criticism and create a sense of inner safety. In this sense, it is not selfish or self-indulgent; it is a foundation for sustainable care for others and the ability to extend compassion to all sentient beings,” he added.

Along with Professor Rodrigo Vergara from the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación and the Centro Nacional De Inteligencia Artificial (CENIA) in Santiago, Chile, Khoury surveyed over 1,200 Canadians on different aspects of compassion, mental health and well-being.

They looked at whether people showed compassion for other human beings, animals and/or themselves.

They also considered compassionate thoughts and compassionate actions.

The researchers ultimately established six “compassion profiles,” which they correlated with different psychological characteristics, such as stress, anxiety, depression, emotional regulation and well-being.

Those who displayed compassion across the board – for others, animals as well as themselves – showed the best psychological functioning and highest levels of well-being, explained Khoury, who is also the director of the McGill Mindfulness Research Lab.

The researchers also followed up with around 200 participants three months after the initial survey, to examine whether compassion profiles are relatively stable over time.

They found they were generally quite stable, with small changes in how much people report acting compassionately.

“This may be because compassionate action requires time, energy and opportunity, and may therefore fluctuate more than compassionate thoughts or feelings,” said Khoury.

The professor said he hopes to examine these profiles over longer periods and in more diverse samples in the future, as the current sample was mainly composed of women and was mostly English-speaking.

He and his team are also working on an intervention called the Embodied and Embedded Mindfulness and Compassion (EEMC) program, which aims to reduce suffering and improve well-being through mindfulness skills and a wider understanding of compassion, including for the self, nature and the broader living world.

“Latent profiles of compassion for self, other humans, and animals: A two time point study”, by Bassam Khoury and Rodrigo C. Vergara, was published in Personality and Individual Differences.

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the McGill William Dawson Scholars program.