A New Mexico assisted living and memory care community has launched a pilot program using arts-based training to build critical thinking and emotional intelligence into its staff members while promoting empathy and overall resident well-being.

Retreat Healthcare in Rio Rancho hosted the ART of High-Performance Caregiving training from ESTEAM (Exercise, Science, Technology, Engagement, Arts and Medicine) Health in mid-December. The training is a follow up to a 2023 pilot program launched in the months leading up to Retreat Healthcare being the first assisted living provider in New Mexico to achieve Joint Commission accreditation for assisted living. 

Kathleen Wallace

There is something of a loose, informal social contract inherent to a successful human society, and that is the condition of reciprocal empathy. When one experiences misfortune, others in a healthy society care and assist, despite there being no contractual obligation. Others care when catastrophe falls upon their neighbors. It’s basic empathy, not a complicated interaction.

Yet we have been immersed in a society that simply wants us to feel empathy in one direction, and that is towards those who have ample resources and power but, for whatever reason, have hit a bump in their golden paved road. The empathy our power structures want us to feel is not the kind that extends downward; the narrative is that we should only feel a concern for the already powerful when they face misfortune.

Find out how evidence-based methods can be used to provide empathy training, bringing huge potential benefits for healthcare outcomes and busting the myth that it can’t be taught

by Jeremy Howick

The beauty of empathy lies in how simple yet powerful its basic techniques can be. Three transformative practices take mere seconds:

1. Encourage practitioners to introduce themselves by name – creating an immediate human connection.

2. Have practitioners sit down beside the patient instead of standing up – a small gesture that patients perceive as giving them more time.

3. Encourage practitioners to provide a truthful, positive message of hope, even if it is just: “We are going to do our best to take care of you.”

By Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin

Empathy is a powerful and essential component of healthy relationships. It involves the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, creating a deep emotional connection that fosters trust, compassion, and mutual respect.[2] In this article, we will explore the importance of empathy in relationships, how it contributes to emotional intimacy, and practical ways to cultivate empathetic communication.

Understanding Empathy
Empathy can be broken down into three main components:

Cognitive Empathy: The ability to understand another person's perspective or feelings intellectually. It involves recognizing what someone else is experiencing without necessarily feeling those emotions yourself.[3]

Emotional Empathy: The capacity to share and feel the emotions of others.[4] This type of empathy allows you to connect on a deeper emotional level and respond with compassion.

Compassionate Empathy: This combines cognitive and emotional empathy, where you not only understand and feel what another person is going through but also feel compelled to help or support them in some way.[5]

Researchers at MIT, NYU, and UCLA develop an approach to help evaluate whether large language models like GPT-4 are equitable enough to be clinically viable for mental health support.

Run by a group of friends in their 20s, Table and Stools is a listening community, which aims to lend a non-judgemental ear to anyone who needs it.

Run by a group of friends in their 20s, Table and Stools is a listening community, which aims to lend a non-judgemental ear to anyone who needs it. Started in Chennai in 2023, the group launched its Bengaluru chapter in June 2024. They set up an info...

Come see the riveting story of how students in Pasadena Unified School District put themselves in the shoes of others in order to learn empathy in this full length documentary, produced by KLRN Pasadena.

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into mental health care is a promising frontier, offering scalable and innovative solutions to address the growing demand for psychological support.

The study "The Emotional Spectrum of LLMs: Leveraging Empathy and Emotion-Based Markers for Mental Health Support" by Alessandro De Grandi, Federico Ravenda, Andrea Raballo, and Fabio Crestani, available on arXiv, delves into this potential.

It introduces a groundbreaking conversational AI system designed to enhance mental health support by combining empathetic responses with emotion-based diagnostic tools.

In such a context, empathy is treated as an expendable commodity. The fate of the battery-run rickshaw pullers exemplifies this. These workers, often rural migrants, already navigate precarious economic realities. The ban on their vehicles, justified under the banner of urban orderliness and energy efficiency, ignores their lived realities. There is no robust plan to compensate for their losses or integrate them into alternative forms of employment. It is a classic example of neoliberal governance: tidy the streets, appease the urban middle class, and leave the marginalised to fend for themselves.

4. Foster A Culture Of Empathy And Open Communication
While the list is endless, fostering a culture of empathy that promotes open communication, continuous feedback and strong career and personal development is foundational to a positive employee experience. This includes promoting work-life balance, providing mental health support and implementing programs that nurture growth to ensure employees feel valued, supported and empowered. - Marcy Klipfel, Businessolver

• Contagious yawning may reflect empathy and nonconscious mimicry in social animals.
• The mirror neuron system is linked to contagious yawning, empathy, and social behaviors.
• Contagious yawning is more common in social species, such as dogs, chimpanzees, and birds.

A new study suggests that encouraging children to empathize with nature could influence their attitudes about the environment. 

BY TERRI HUGGINS 

With the threat of global warming and the debates about its existence growing stronger, many of us lean on the hope that future generations will have the knowledge and kindness needed to preserve our environment. 

But how can we help young people grow up to be guardians of the planet? A recent study found that children who are more empathic toward nature have more positive attitudes about behaviors that protect the environment.

Love your neighbor vs. love the nature
When we think of empathy, we tend to envision the ability to identify specific feelings in someone, often distressing ones, and respond accordingly with caring behavior. The idea of empathy toward humans can also apply to empathy toward nature, which is what researchers looked at in this study. People who feel empathy for nature adopt the perspective of animals in pain, for example, and are more inclined to help them.

I think the trend of cutting oneself off from MAGA individuals plays into the warfare plans of the enemies of Democracy.  And today beyond the fold I want to propose a simple idea on how to relate to MAGA folks.

In addition I’m going to discuss a bit about my plans for building a culture of empathy locally by reaching out to local bay area churches to host Empathy Circle Cafés at their facilities.

Darwall: Empathy can mean various things. Cognitive empathy is what is sometimes called perspective taking — the ability to put yourself in someone else’s perspective. That’s utterly central to all the reactive attitudes and to the second-person standpoint. Another form is sometimes called emotional contagion. And that’s where people catch each other’s feelings without feeling them as if from the other’s point of view. For example, you walk into a room, and everybody is really down, and you find yourself feeling down. You don’t really know why. You catch the feeling without catching the object of the feeling. 

To continue to build our community around empathy, the Seattle Aquarium launched Empathy Café, a monthly web chat series that discusses topics of interest related to fostering empathy for conservation of wildlife.

Empathy Café sessions last one hour and include time to connect and hear updates from one another, engage with a presentation or facilitated discussion, and share opportunities for collaboration or workshop problems of practice. Empathy Café sessions are free for all participants and open to anyone interested in fostering empathy for wildlife. Feel free to attend regularly or when your schedule allows!

By Shirley Knowles

Why Active and Empathetic Listening Matter for Business Objectives
Active and empathetic listening is already second nature to most HR professionals. However, the usefulness of this kind of listening extends far beyond HR departments, reaching every tier of leadership.

The leaders who leave the most significant marks on their organizations are those who have mastered active and empathetic listening, cultivating this skill as bodybuilders cultivate muscle. They view their employees as fully-fledged individuals, with diverse concerns and rich lives outside of the workplace.

HR professionals will always be available to provide people skills as needed. However, leaders would be wise to view them as a safety net and to take it upon themselves to cultivate the fundamentals of active and empathetic listening. The benefits are immense —both on a business level and a human one.

The increasing demand for mental health services has highlighted the need for innovative solutions, particularly in the realm of psychological conversational AI, where the availability of sensitive data is scarce. In this work, we explored the development of a system tailored for mental health support with a novel approach to psychological assessment based on explainable emotional profiles in combination with empathetic conversational models, offering a promising tool for augmenting traditional care, particularly where immediate expertise is unavailable.

Radical Empathy in Leadership

Radical empathy is the willingness to show love and understanding to people whose actions toward you—and others who share your identity or belief—are the opposite of love. It requires us to offer empathy to those who may choose hatred or indifference. While this may seem like an arduous challenge, it is also the pathway to true transformation.

As leaders, it is our responsibility to cultivate an environment where empathy is not just a value, but a practice. We must recognize that everyone, regardless of their background or beliefs, has the potential for growth and change. By showing empathy to those who need it most, we create the conditions for deeper, more authentic connections that can lead to lasting change.

David Burns M.D
Empathy is considered by many to be a cornerstone of effective mental health treatment. American psychologist Carl Rogers achieved fame with his claim that empathy was the “necessary and sufficient condition” for change in therapy, and many experts agree that empathy creates feelings of trust, reduces negative feelings, and boosts self-esteem.

Can digital devices do the same thing?

Digital mental health apps are enjoying a true breakthrough moment, and AI shows great promise in mimicking human conversation. But can digital empathy compete with human empathy in terms of healing?

By Joseph Njau Kinyanjui

Empathy, often seen as a soft skill in personal development, is now being recognized as an essential driver of success in the corporate, branding, and strategic communication sectors. As we move deeper into an age dominated by digital interactions and data-driven decisions, the question of how to engage with customers, employees, and other stakeholders on a human level becomes increasingly important. This article explores the intersection between empathy and communication across various sectors, shedding light on how empathy can reshape corporate strategies, enhance branding efforts, and improve personal communication.