We carried out a project to investigate and support self-compassion and treatment adherence in people living with psoriasis.

Self-compassion is an attitude that you take towards yourself in difficult times. It consists of being kind to yourself rather than judging yourself badly when things go wrong for you, understanding that difficulties are a normal part of life rather than feeling alone because of them, and being mindful of your distress rather than getting caught up in your feelings. Self-compassion is linked with better wellbeing and may be particularly important for people with psoriasis, as both the condition and its treatments can be sources of difficulty.

Dr Elaine Clarke and Dr Rachael Thorneloe worked on the project. Funding for the work was provided from the Psoriasis Association, via the Cecil King Memorial Fund.

In the first part of the project, we carried out a survey of people who were prescribed a topical therapy for psoriasis. We found that people who were more self-compassionate tended to use their topical therapies in the way that their doctor had prescribed. This suggests that helping people living with psoriasis to be more self-compassionate would be beneficial, particularly in terms of supporting self-management of their psoriasis.

Next, we co-designed a self-help leaflet with six people who had psoriasis. The leaflet aimed to help people living with psoriasis learn how to be more self-compassionate. We held two co-design workshops, during which we discussed what we needed include in the leaflet and to present it. We worked with a graphic designer to create images to go with the text. The leaflet includes an explanation of self-compassion and why this is important, exercises to help people become more self-compassionate, troubleshooting of potential problems, and quick tips for people to try.

Dr Elaine Clarke, Research Associate at the Centre for Behavioural Science and Applied Psychology, led the project.

Dr Clarke said: “Being self-compassionate is a helpful way of responding to life’s difficulties, including the particular challenges of living with psoriasis. Self-compassion is something that you can increase with practice, so in this project we’ve produced a free resource to help support self-compassion in people living with psoriasis.”

The new self-help leaflet, Psoriasis and Self-Compassion, is available to download here (PDF, 429.5KB). A limited number of printed booklets are also available - contact cebsap@shu.ac.uk for more information.

We're interested to know what people think of the new leaflet. If you would like to provide feedback on it, you can do so via a short (5 mins) online survey here.