Enacting compassion in mHealth: communicative subprocesses of compassionate coaching and their relationships to resilience during a prolonged pandemic

This study examines communicative enactments of compassion in mHealth-based coaching in the context of a prolonged pandemic. We conducted individual interviews with mHealth intervention participants in high and low resilience groups to investigate (a) the emerging patterns of compassionate coaching in mHealth and (b) the differences in coaching practices between the two groups. Our findings reveal how communication constitutes compassion by illustrating emerging mHealth practices that co-constructed the three subprocesses of compassion via virtual interactions: recognizing, relating, and (re)acting. Our study focuses specifically on unique communicative strategies designed according to mHealth affordances, environmental and relational contingencies, and participants’ health-related conditions and engagements. Further, the frequencies of compassionate coaching practices differed in high and low resilience groups, implying the influences of compassion on fostering resilience in a sustained crisis.