Feasibility of a Loving Kindness Intervention for Mitigating Weight Stigma in Nursing Students: A Focus on Self-Compassion.
Level 2 - randomized trial
Individual randomized controlled trial
PubMed 37090853 · doi:10.1007/s12671-023-02094-8
What was done
Participants (189 nursing students) were randomly assigned to either a loving kindness meditation condition or a body scan control condition before completing an implicit bias task and self-report measures assessing internalization of the thin ideal, weight bias, positive attitudes towards people with obesity, positive emotions, self-compassion, cognitive flexibility, and compassionate care.
What was found
No statistically significant differences were found between the groups for self-compassion, cognitive flexibility, weight bias, or compassionate care (exact numerical values not reported in abstract). Participants in the loving kindness condition reported significantly higher positive emotionality than controls. Across both conditions, higher self-compassion correlated with lower weight bias, and multiple linear regression revealed that thin-ideal internalization and self-compassion accounted for 19.2% of the variance in positive attitudes towards people with obesity.
Why it matters
A brief loving kindness meditation was insufficient to alter weight bias or self-compassion relative to an active control among nursing students, underscoring the challenge of addressing healthcare weight stigma with minimal brief interventions.
Limits
The study tested only nursing students, evaluated only immediate effects of a brief intervention without long-term follow-up, omitted exact group-level numerical data in the abstract, and was not preregistered.