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Summary Compassionate Technology
articles
What is compassion and how can we measure it?
Mental health and eHealth technology
The role of compassionate technology in blended and digital mental health interventions
Delivery of compassionate mental health care in a digital technology-driven age
Artificial intelligence technologies and compassion in healthcare
Virtual reality aggression prevention therapy (VRAPT) versus waiting list control for
forensic psychiatric inpatients
Efficacy of a virtual reality biofeedback game (DEEP) to reduce anxiety and disruptive
classroom behavior
The contribution of a body scan mindfulness meditation to effectiveness of
internet-delivered CBT for insomnia in adolescents
A systematic review exploring how young people use online forums for support around
mental health
(Not so) smart sleep tracking through the phone
Delivering cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with symptoms of depression and
anxiety using a fully automated conversational agent (Woebot)
The next generation: Chatbots in clinical psychology and psychotherapy to foster mental
health
Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) in mobile health
Barriers and facilitators for the implementation of blended psychotherapy for depression
Clinical practice models for the use of e-mental health resources in primary health care by
health professionals and peer workers
Responsible relations
Perceived drivers and barriers to the adoption of e-mental health by psychologists
Man vs. machine
Use the principles of design thinking to address limitations of digital mental health
interventions for youth
Biocueing and ambulatory biofeedback to enhance emotion regulation
Personal Sensing
How a decade of telemedicine has reshaped a career
Internet and mobile-based depression interventions for people with depression
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What is compassion and how can we measure it? A review of
definitions and measures.
Study guidelines:
➔ Knowing the new definition of compassion.
➔ Knowing how this definition is created.
➔ Knowing why compassion is important in health care
◆ Clinical outcome is better if therapists are acting in an compassionate way
◆ Evolutionary function
➔ Gilbert is an important name, who works with compassion within clinical
psychology
◆ Distress tolerance
➔ Neff about self-compassion vs. other-compassion
➔ Neff about common humanity
➔ Relationship between compassion and empathy
➔ All measures fall short of the 5 elements (not really important)
Why is compassion important (in health care)?
Compassion is really important. Many countries have put it in their core values for several
domains, like the justice system, health care and education. The first reason is because it
has an evolutionary function. Darwin states that communities with the greatest number of
the most sympathetic members flourish best, and rear the most offspring. Being
compassionate is functional, because caring and nurturing protects the young. It is also
beneficial in mate selection and it facilitates cooperative relationships with others.
The second reason is that compassion is useful within the healthcare domain because it
improves clinical outcomes, increases patient satisfaction with services and enhances the
quality of information gathered from patients. Besides this, self-compassion leads to
improved individual well-being. Being compassionate would act as a buffer against stress
and facilitates recovery from mental disorders. Also, compassion in childhood is found to be
related to a secure attachment and the capacity to act in a compassionate way in adulthood.
Despite the importance, it is not clear how to define compassion. Therefore, the main focus
of this paper is to suggest a definition of compassion based on consolidation of
conceptualizations and definitions in the field.
Conceptualizations of compassion: towards a definition
The word compassion would stem from ‘to suffer with’. It involves feeling for someone
who’s suffering and being motivated to help someone. So, it is really about two things:
witnessing another’s suffering and wanting to help (action). In order words, compassion is
an emotional and behavioral concept.
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Kanov et al argue that compassion consists of three facets:
1. Noticing - Being aware of someone suffering.
2. Feeling - Responding emotionally to the suffering and having empathic concern
(imagining or feeling someone’s condition).
3. Responding - Having a desire to act to alleviate someone’s suffering.
This means that compassion is not only an emotional or behavioral concept, but also a
cognitive concept, because it involves being able to imagine and reason about one’s
experiences. Many religions place emphasis on compassion, especially Buddhism. In
Buddhist conceptualizations it is also stated that compassion entails these three
components.
Gilbert works with compassionate technology in healthcare. He conceptualizes compassion
in evolutionary terms. He states that it is an evolved motivational system, designed to
regulate negative affect, just like the ability to form attachment bonds and engage in
cooperative behavior. Gilberts sees compassion as consisting of 6 components:
1. Sensitivity - Being responsive to others’ emotions and perceiving when help is
needed.
2. Sympathy - Showing concern.
3. Empathy - Putting yourself in others’ shoes.
4. Motivation/caring - Wanting to help.
5. Distress tolerance - The ability to tolerate difficult emotions in oneself when
confronted with someone else’s suffering, without becoming overwhelmed by them.
When becoming overwhelmed, we want to get away from people, which hinders
the ability to actually help.
6. Non-judgement - Remaining tolerant to someone, although their condition makes
you feel bad. This is also in line with Buddhist conceptualizations.
There is consensus that compassion can be felt for people who we do not even know or
will never meet (children in Africa).
Neff agrees with Gilbert that compassion also includes tolerance and a non-judgmental
attitude and developed a definition of compassion for others into a model of
self-compassion. In this sense, self-compassion is seen as compassion directed inwards.
This consists of three components:
1. Kindness - Being non-judgmental towards self.
2. Mindfulness - Not overidentifying with painful feelings, but holding them in mindful
awareness.
3. Common humanity - Seeing suffering as something that could happen to the self as
well.
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Self-compassion and other-compassion is probably something else, since Neff explored the
relationship between both and found that they were not correlated or only weakly
correlated. It is not yet clear if this means that the two concepts are independent or if it
reflects a definitional problem. Pommier applied Neff’s model of self-compassion to a
model of other-compassion and suggested that both concepts involve:
1. Kindness - Understanding others, instead of criticizing them.
2. Mindfulness - Notice another’s suffering, without feeling overwhelmed.
3. Common humanity - Realizing that all humans suffer and that you could experience
the same, if you were less fortunate. Buddhism also states that suffering is a human
experience.
In short, all these definitions see compassion as awareness of someone’s suffering, being
moved by it and acting to help. It also consists of being able to tolerate uncomfortable
feelings that arise in oneself. Besides this, compassion entails acknowledging that we could
find ourselves in a similar position.
Related constructs
A related construct is empathy, kindness, pity and altruism. This are the differences:
1. Empathy - Empathy has cognitive and affective components, just like compassion.
Cognitive empathy is intellectually understanding someone’s perspective. Affective
empathy is sharing others’ emotions. But empathy is just an essential element of
compassion. Compassion is more than only empathy, for example feeling the desire
to help someone. Another difference is that empathy can be felt when someone’s
feeling happy too, while compassion is felt in response to suffering. Moreover,
different brain regions activate in response to compassion and empathy training.
2. Pity - Pity does not require an inclination to help neither. Pity also implies that you
see someone as unworthy of help.
3. Altruism - This concept is more about the behavioral aspect. Acting out of altruism
often leads to greater personal costs than acting out of compassion as well.
4. Kindness - Kindness is just a component of compassion. Both concepts include
elements outside of the other concept. For example, kindness includes elements
beyond compassion, like remembering someone’s birthday, since it is not only
related to suffering. Also, compassion may not always involve kindness in the
moment (confronting someone for their own sake).
Compassion: a proposed definition
The new definition: Compassion is a cognitive, affective and behavioral process consisting
of 5 elements:
1. Recognizing suffering
