Resumen de Attachment-based compassion therapy: Efficacy of an online self-applied intervention for improving quality of life and wellbeing in a chronic medical illness population
Chronic medical conditions (CMCs) have become one of the most challenging health problems not only for the individuals who suffer from them but also for society in general (Dobbie & Mellor, 2008; Golics et al., 2013). The prevalence of these diseases has been increasing in recent years, supposing high costs in terms of morbidity and mortality and in terms of socioeconomic burden and health care budgets (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 2009; WHO, 2019).
Given the importance of psychological factors on overall physical health, new multidisciplinary approaches to work on these aspects have been developed to improve the management of these diseases and to target psychological processes that interfere with an effective illness management (e.g. self-criticism or illness-related shame) (Bierman et al., 2021; Legido-Quigley et al., 2013).
In this sense, compassion-based interventions (CBIs) have received considerable attention as one of the approaches to improve quality of life and well-being in individuals with chronic physical conditions (Friis et al., 2016; Lathren et al., 2018; Penlington, 2019). This compassionate approach to illness has been found to be beneficial for coping with the stress caused by a chronic condition and for improving physical and psychological symptomatology. In addition, a compassionate attitude towards oneself may promote the implementation of healthy and self-care behaviors which, in turn, facilitates an adaptive disease management (Austin et al., 2021; Kiliç et al., 2021; Morgan et al., 2020; Sirois et al., 2015).
On the other hand, emerging evidence shows potential value of delivering a CBI online in the context of chronic illness to overcome some barriers that could interfere with their effectiveness in people with chronic conditions (e.g. access, mobility, or transportation limitations) (Finlay-Jones et al., 2020; Jerant et al., 2005; Karekla et al. al., 2019).
In recent years, CBIs delivered online have begun to accumulate empirical evidence, although more research is still needed, particularly in chronic medical conditions population. Therefore, the main objective of this dissertation is to analyze the efficacy of a CBI delivered online (the Internet Attachment-Based Compassion Therapy; iABCT; Campos, 2020) to improve the quality of life and well-being in a population with chronic medical conditions.
Concretely, this dissertation contains three chapters.
Chapter 1 describes a theoretical background of the main topics of this dissertation, including the main characteristics and scientific literature about CBIs in the context of chronic medical conditions.
In chapter 2 the randomized controlled trial will be presented and primary and secondary analysis on the efficacy of the iABCT in a population with chronic medical conditions will be discussed.
Finally, chapter 3 is aimed at describing the main findings, limitations and future lines of the experimental research study.
