Why Being Kind is GOOD for your HEALTH

Kindness isn’t just a happy-face emoji or a cherry-on-top thing.

Thanks to the cooperation and collaboration it fosters, kindness is one of the main reasons people have been able to survive and thrive in communities for thousands of years. It also seems more important than ever given the challenges we’re facing today, from climate change to racial and economic injustice, according to Kelli Harding, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. In fact, she says, kindness “might be the critical issue facing our world right now.”

That’s because kinder communities—ones that allow. The COVID-19 pandemic is just one stark example of this paradigm: Disadvantaged communities that haven’t received the same consideration (financial and otherwise) as wealthier ones have faced much higher tolls from the deadly virus.