Effects of Student Care: an adapted brief Mindful Self-Compassion training on stress, well-being, life satisfaction, and academic procrastination – A pilot randomized controlled trial with Vietnamese undergraduates university students

Intervention name: Student Care The Student Care is an adapted brief version of the standardized Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) training program. The standardized Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) curriculum, developed by Dr. Kristin Neff and Dr. Christopher Germer in 2010, is an eight-week training program that meets for three hours per week and includes a half-day silent retreat. It combines core skills from both mindfulness and self-compassion, providing an effective framework for emotional resilience. The program includes theories, guided meditations, and informal self-compassion practices that participants are encourages to apply in their daily life. The Student Care is developed by the author, who is a certified MSC trainer, with support and guidance from her mentor. In specific, it is designed to include conceptual learning and practices focusing on stress, well-being, life satisfaction, and academic procrastination, while retaining the three core meditation practices from the full MSC program which are “Affectionate breathing”, “Loving kindness for ourselves”, and “Giving and receiving compassion”. Key contents from sessions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 of the standardized MSC program is retained because these sessions focus on cultivating mindfulness and self-compassion, which have been shown to support stress reduction, well-being, life satisfaction, and academic procrastination. The Student Care training program consists of four weekly in-person group sessions, each lasting two hours, adapted for Vietnamese undergraduate university students. The approximate group size will be 20–30 participants. Session 1 will introduce mindful self-compassion, Session 2 will focus on mindfulness and self-compassion, Session 3 will address embracing compassion, and Session 4 will focus on cultivating happiness. Between sessions, participants will be instructed to listen to audio recordings of guided meditations and engage in informal self-compassion practices to reinforce their learning and deepen the training experience. The audio recordings will be approximately 10–20 minutes in length, depending on the specific practice or meditation, and participants will be encouraged to practice at least once per week. The Student Care will be trained by the author, a certified teacher of the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program. Session attendance checklists will be used to monitor participants’ adherence to the intervention.