Social belonging, compassion, and kindness: Key ingredients for fostering resilience, recovery, and growth from the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Background

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to increases in anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, burnout, grief, and suicide, particularly for healthcare workers and vulnerable individuals. In some places, due to low vaccination rates and new variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerging, psychosocial strategies for remaining resilient during an ongoing multi-faceted stressor are still needed. Elsewhere, thanks to successful vaccination campaigns, some countries have begun reopening but questions remain regarding how to best recover, adjust, and grow following the collective stress and loss caused by the pandemic.

Method

Here, we briefly describe three evidence-based strategies that can help foster individual and collective recovery, growth, and resilience: cultivating social belonging, practicing compassion, and engaging in kindness.

Results

Social belonging involves a sense of interpersonal connectedness. Practicing compassion involves perceiving suffering as part of a larger shared human experience and directing kindness toward it. Finally, engaging in kindness involves prosocial acts toward others.

Conclusions

Together, these strategies can promote social connectedness and help reduce anxiety, stress, and depression, which may help psychologists, policymakers, and the global community remain resilience in places where cases are still high while promoting adjustment and growth in communities that are now recovering and looking to the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Social safety
• social belonging
• empathy
• prosocial behavior
• coronavirus
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

George Slavich was supported by a Society in Science—Branco Weiss Fellowship, NARSAD Young Investigator Grant 23958 from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and National Institutes of Health grant K08 MH103443. Jamil Zaki was supported by National Science Foundation CAREER Award BCS-1454518 and National Institute of Mental Health R01 MH112560. These organizations had no role in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.