Effectiveness of compassion-based therapy on emotional empathy, parent-child relationship, and child quality of life in mothers of children with cancer

Abstract

The present research aimed at investigating the effectiveness of compassion-based therapy on the parent-child relationship, the quality of life of the child, and emotional empathy among mothers of children suffering from cancer. This quasi-experimental study employed a pretestposttest design with a one-month follow-up, conducted with both an experimental and a control group. The sample consisted of 36 mothers of children with cancer who visited Omid Hospital in Isfahan, Iran, during the second 6 months of 2023. Participants were selected using a convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to either an experimental group (receiving compassion-based therapy and acceptance and commitment-based treatment) or a control group. Mehrabian and Epstein's Emotional Empathy Questionnaire (1972), Pianta's Parent-Child Relationship Scale (1994), and Varney, Syed, and Curtin's Quality of Life Scale (2003) were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed using the analysis of covariance method in SPSS software (version 23). According to the results of this study, the mean scores for emotional empathy and the parent-child relationship in the intervention group showed a significant increase in both the immediate post-intervention phase and at the one-month follow-up, compared to the pre-intervention phase (P<0.01). In contrast, no statistically significant difference was observed in the control group at the specified time points (P<0.01). However, there were no significant differences in the mean scores of children's quality of life between the experimental and control groups across the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up assessments (P<0.05). Based on the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that compassion-based therapy is an appropriate treatment for reducing problems ex erienced b mothers of children with cancer. Copyright © 2025 Avicenna Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Care.