“EMPATHY IS so yesterday’’ sounds the alarm regarding important consequences of declining empathy. Many plausible reasons are given for why college students and society may be exhibiting less empathy, such as increased use of technology for communication and more self-concern in an increasingly uncertain world. Researcher Sara Konrath suggests that if empathy can go down, it can also go up because it is malleable. The neuroscience literature supports this claim, and in medical education we know that while empathy traditionally declines during some periods of medical training, it can also rebound when certain stressors are removed.
The discovery of neural mirror mechanisms in the human brain has demonstrated that humans are hard-wired for internal representations of others’ experiences. These mechanisms appear to be susceptible to down-regulation and up-regulation based on complex factors. Education in empathy is the subject of research at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where preliminary results indicate that empathy can be enhanced in medical trainees.
Empathy training and mindful practice are becoming embedded in curricula for medical trainees to learn the fundamental elements of compassionate care. Such efforts could well be replicated in other educational and business settings where empathic relationships are essential.
Dr. Helen Riess
Boston
The writer is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of empathy research and training in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
