"Love Your Neighbor as Yourself": Prevalence and Roles of Self-Compassion and Other-Compassion in Relation to Depression with Empathy as a Mediator in a National Sample of Poles

The Christian commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" underscores the importance of extending love, compassion, and empathy to oneself and others. However, little is understood regarding the prevalence and disparities in the direction of compassion flow within the general population and its association with mental health. This study aims to assess the prevalence of self-compassion and compassion for others and to explore the model depicting the relationship between compassion flows and depression intensity, with dimensions of empathy hypothesized to mediate this relationship. A representative sample of 604 adult Poles was recruited for this study. Participants completed questionnaires assessing self-compassion, compassion for others, dimensions of empathy, and depression. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the relationships between the variables. Most participants (60.6%) exhibited greater compassion for others than for themselves (27.6%), while 11.8% reported equal levels of self- and other-compassion. SEM revealed that self-compassion exhibited a stronger, negative relationship with depression, both directly and through the mediation of personal distress. Conversely, compassion for others showed a positive relationship with depression through the mediation of personal distress and a negative relationship through weaker mediation of empathic concern. Overall, individuals tend to demonstrate greater compassion toward others than toward themselves, potentially contributing to elevated levels of depression. These findings suggest that self-compassion serves as a protective factor against depression, whereas compassion for others may have mixed effects, contingent on levels of personal distress and empathic concern.