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Appreciative Inquiry: A Conversation with David Cooperrider

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Self-Care Matters - Key messages about self-care

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Self-Care Matters - Understanding self-care

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Self-Care Matters - Planning for self-care

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Self-Care Matters - Practising self-care

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Self-Care Matters - Mindful Breathing by .

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Self-Care Matters - Mindful Breathing (Guided Exercise) is a brief mindful breathing exercise you can learn and use anywhere to help ground yourself in the present moment. Includes ‘box breathing’. 

This exercise is short and flexible for personal use in public settings. Self-Care Matters - Mindful Breathing is the first of three exercises available as part of Self-Care Matters, a Palliative Care Australia resource aimed at helping to support you in your role in relation to palliative care, whatever that may be, to prevent burnout and build resilience.

You might wish to download and use the Self-Care Matters planning tool, which is designed to assist you in reflecting on, and planning for, your self-care. Learn more about why self-care matters via PCA's website @ https://palliativecare.org.au/resources/self-care-matters/

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A validated and standardized tool for assessing the variety and frequency of self-care strategies

Self-Care: The Foundation of Well-Being

Self-care is defined as the daily process of being aware of and attending to one's basic physiological and emotional needs. This includes shaping one's daily routine, relationships, and environment as needed to promote self-care. Self-care is seen as the foundational work required for physical and emotional well-being, and is associated with positive physical health, emotional well-being, and mental health. Research suggests that steady and intentional practice of self-care may prevent the onset of mental health symptoms, job/school burnout, and improve work and school productivity.

A Measure of Mindful Self-Care

The Mindful Self-Care Scale (MSCS) is intended to help individuals identify areas of strength and weakness in self-care behavior, as well as interventions that serve to improve self-care. The scale addresses ten domains of self-care: nutrition/hydration, exercise, soothing strategies, self-awareness/mindfulness, rest, relationships, physical and medical practices, environmental factors, self-compassion, and spiritual practices. There are also three general items to assess the individual's general or more global practices of self-care.

There are three versions of the scale: MSCS-Clinical, MSCS-Standard, and MSCS-Brief. Each scale is open access and available to download below.

You are free to use the MSCS in clinical practice or teaching without permission. If you would like to use them in research, or wish to modify them in some way, please email me and and ask for permission. Please keep me updated on all publications and findings, so that my team and I can continue to develop the scales. Thank you!

An 84-item scale

For use in clinical settings, educational settings, or personal use

Assesses actionable self-care behaviors

Helps you, your students, and your patients develop a self-care plan

A 33-item scale

Psychometrically sound

Developed through a series of analyses

Subscales are positively correlated with body esteem and negative correlated with substance use and eating disordered behavior

Take The Assessment

A 24-item scale

For use when the length of the scale is of utmost importance

Developed through analyses with hospice workers

Inversely associated with burnout and positively associated with well-being

Citation for MSCS-Clinical:
Cook-Cottone, C. P. (2015). Mindfulness and Yoga for Embodied Self-Regulation: A Primer for Mental Health Professionals. New York, NY: Springer Publishing.

Citation for MSCS-Standard:
Cook-Cottone, C. P., & Guyker, W. M. (2017). The Development and Validation of the Mindful Self-Care Scale (MSCS): an Assessment of Practices that Support Positive Embodiment. Mindfulness, 1-15.

Citation for MSCS-Brief:
Cook-Cottone, C. P., & Guyker, W. M. (2017). The Development and Validation of the Mindful Self-Care Scale (MSCS): an Assessment of Practices that Support Positive Embodiment. Mindfulness, 1-15.

New! Take the 33-item assessment and get feedback to develop your self-care plan.

Clinical Publications

Publications about or using the MSCS

The Development of the Mindful Self-Care Scale (Cook-Cottone & Guyker, 2017)

Mindful Self-Care and Hospice Care Professionals (Hotchkiss, 2018)

Mindful Self-Care and Medical Residents (Gonzalez, 2018)

Mindful Self-Care among Caretakers for those with Dementia (Kovaleva et al., 2018)

Mindful Self-Care in Predicting Burnout Risk among Chaplains (Hotchkiss & Lesher, 2018)

Mindful Self-Care Dimensions as Agents of Well-Being for Students in Mental Health Fields (Sünbül et al., 2018)

Mindful Self-Care Scale (MSCS): Adaptation and Validation in a Normative Turkish Sample (Sünbül et al., 2018)

Impact of Mindful Self-Care and Perceived Stress on Health (Feng et al., 2019)

Validation of the MSCS and development of the Brief-MSCS among hospice and healthcare professionals (Hotchkiss & Cook-Cottone, 2019)

Putting Oneself in the Body of Others: A Pilot Study on the Efficacy of an Embodied Virtual Reality System to Generate Self-Compassion (Cebolla et al., 2019)

Helping the Helpers: Mindful Self-Care, Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Compassion Satisfaction Among Utah Mental Health Professionals (Scaletta, 2020)

A Study of The Relationship between Mindful Self-Care and Subjective Wellbeing among College Students and Working Professionals (Chatterjee & Jethwani, 2020)

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Mindful Self-Care Scale - Catherine Cook-Cottone, Ph.D.

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A validated and standardized tool for assessing the variety and frequency of self-care strategies Self-care is defined as the daily process of being aware of and attending to one's basic physiological and emotional needs. This includes shaping one's daily routine, relationships, and environment as needed to promote self-care.