The role of self-compassion and mindfulness in the association between adverse childhood experiences and psychological distress: A meta-analytic mediation analysis.

BACKGROUND Adverse childhood experiences have been widely associated with psychological distress. A growing body of literature suggests that mindfulness and self-compassion may be a pathway linking adverse childhood experiences to psychological distress. OBJECTIVE The aim of the current meta-analysis was to investigate the mediating role of mindfulness and self-compassion in the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and psychological distress using structural equation modeling meta-analysis. METHODS A systematic literature search initially identified 15,058 studies from three electronic databases: PsycINFO, Scopus, and PubMed. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 29 articles were eligible for inclusion in the current meta-analysis. Two-staged structural equation modeling meta-analysis was used to examine correlations among mindfulness, self-compassion, adverse childhood experiences, and psychological distress. This method estimated a pooled correlation matrix under a random-effects model. RESULTS We analyzed 29 independent datasets containing data from 19,854 participants. The results showed that both mindfulness (β = 0.09, 95 % CI [0.06, 0.12]) and self-compassion (β = 0.09, 95 % CI [0.06, 0.11]) mediated the associations between adverse childhood experiences and psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS Given that the present findings were based on cross-sectional data, further research with rigorous designs, such as experimental and intervention studies, is needed to investigate the mediating effects of self-compassion and mindfulness on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and psychological outcomes This review calls for further longitudinal research to test whether self-compassion and mindfulness act as mediators in the link between ACEs and psychological distress.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  International Journal of Child Abuse & Neglect

• Publication date

  2026-01-13

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.chiabu.2026.107886PMID 41534187
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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