“People Being with People”: A Body- Mapping Inquiry into the Lived Experiences of Compassion in Mental Healthcare Workers

Compassion is the foundation of healthcare, but how compassion is understood within mental healthcare is not clear. This PhD research explored mental health workers' lived experiences of compassion. To do this, a qualitative inquiry incorporating body mapping as an arts-based method was employed to discover positive experiences of compassion and dreams of ways to embed compassion into mental healthcare systems. Findings included individual narrative portraits, life-sized body maps and shared themes that integrated the verbal and visual data into three main themes: 1) knowing, 2) being, 3) doing. Compassion is viewed as multi-dimensional, continually evolving and foundational for mental healthcare.