Mindfulness, Compassion, Resilience and Well-being in College Students

This paper will use a national cross-sectional survey approach to look at the association between trainable mind-body qualities (mindfulness and self-compassion) with well-being and resilience in 111 college students across the U.S.. Specifically, it will investigate (1) the relationship between trainable qualities (mindfulness, self-compassion) and the resilience, and subjective well-being in students, and (2) compare how these variables were distributed based on enrollment in a college course on compassion. After examination of descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations, comparative analyses were also employed to determine whether enrollment in compassion college courses had any relationship to one’s scores. Results: Respondents included 12 students enrolled in Compassion college course, and 99 students who were not. Both mindfulness and self-compassion showed significant positive correlations with well-being and resilience in all students, and in subgroups based on enrollment at p < .01. Additionally, students enrolled in the course averaged 3 points higher scores across all measures except resilience, where scores were about the same. Conclusions: In all college students, regardless of their enrollment in Compassion, well-being and resilience are positively correlated with both mindfulness and self-compassion. Furthermore, scores based on enrollment in “Compassion” yielded higher levels of mindfulness, self-compassion, resilience, and well-being.