The Structural Relationships Model of Mindfulness and Self-Compassion with Body Shame through Body Appreciation in Cancer Patients

Cancer disease can cause body shame in patients by causing physical changes, which needs to be researched. Therefore, the present study was done aimed to investigate the structural relationship model of mindfulness and self-compassion with body shame through body appreciation in cancer patients.

The research method was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population included all cancer patients who referred to the treatment clinics of Bandar Abbas city in 2022 that 200 patients were selected by purposive sampling. Body Image Shame Scale (BISS), Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS), Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) and Body Appreciation Scale (BAS) were used for gathering data. Data were analyzed through structural equations modeling and SPSS-26 and Amos-23 software.

The results showed that there is a relationship between body appreciation and body shame with a rate of -0.426. There is a relationship between mindfulness and self-compassion with body appreciation with 0.481 and 0.453, respectively. Also, the results showed that there is a direct relationship between mindfulness and self-compassion with the rate of -0.276 and -0.411 and indirectly with the rate of -0.205 and -0.193 with body shame.

According to the findings of this research, it can be concluded that mindfulness and self-compassion can reduce body shame in cancer patients by increasing body appreciation. Therefore, the obtained findings highlight the importance of interventions based on mindfulness and self-compassion to improve body shame in cancer patients.