Compassion Focused Therapy Outcome Measures

The following section presents a summary of the routine clinical outcome measures used by the Compassion Focused Therapy Programme in 2016. All service users attending the CFT Programme are invited to complete the following measures, before starting the programme and again after completion. These measures have been selected because studies have shown them to be reliable and valid (Derogatis & Melisartos, 1983: Derogatis & Fitzpatrick, 2004: Gilbert et al., 2011), in other words, they provide a good measure of the intended outcome of the CFT programme.

• Brief Symptom Inventory

The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 1993) is a 53-item measure of psychological distress experienced by service users within the previous week. Each item is rated on a 5 – point scale of distress from 0 (Not at all) to 4 (Extremely). Higher scores are indicative of greater psychological difficulty.

• Fears of Self-Compassion

The Fears of Self-Compassion Scale (FSCS; Gilbert, McEwan, Matos & Rivis, 2011) is a 15 item subscale of a longer measure designed to explore the fears of compassion for self (e.g. “I fear that if I am too compassionate towards myself, bad things will happen”). Higher scores are indicative of greater fears of self-compassion.

• Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale

This 11-item scale (Gilbert et al., 2008) measures the extent to which people perceive their social world as safe. The items relate to how comfortable they are in relationships and how pleasurable they find interactions with others.