role of self-compassion and forgiveness in prediction of depression severity among university students

aim and background: it appears that depressed people have low self-compassion and forgiveness due to having negative attitudes. in order to test this hypothesis, the current study investigated the role of self-compassion and forgiveness in the prediction of depression severity among university students. methods and materials: in a correlational study during 2010-11, 136 individuals were randomly selected from all students of mohaghegh ardabili university (ardabil, iran). the participants filled out depression, self-compassion, and forgiveness questionnaires. the collected data was analyzed using pearson's correlation test and multiple regression analysis in spss 18 . findings: self-compassion and forgiveness were negatively correlated with depression. in addition, self-compassion and forgiveness explained 16% and 20% of the variance of depression, respectively. conclusions: self-compassion and forgiveness are two positive personality traits that decrease the probability of depression.