In an angry America, a new remedy emerges: Compassion

As the head of a big-city hospital's emergency department, Susan O'Mara has always focused on providing quick answers to people in crisis: A relative desperate for information. An injured person facing a very long wait. A colleague exhausted from dealing with fed-up patients. But until a special training a few months ago, O'Mara didn't consider whether there were ways to be more compassionate in her response.

The training taught the doctor to pause and listen, and not jump to fix or respond defensively if an angry patient is on the offense. She said it has helped her focus better and find a deeper well of sympathy, even as she deals with trying situations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in the nation's capital.

"You want to get patients from Point A to Point B with compassion, and also not internalize and feel badly yourself," she said. "To approach someone who is sad, scared, angry - to approach someone who is angry with compassion is the Holy Grail of emergency medicine."

Defined as the ability to notice suffering (in ourselves and others) and then the desire to take action to alleviate it, "compassion" has become the buzzword for an angry nation. It is increasingly being held up by neuroscientists, corporations, business schools and psychologists as a concrete, powerful health strategy - and a successful business model.

Universities have opened centers devoted to compassion. Marianne Williamson and Cory Booker talked about it as an urgent American need during their presidential campaigns. Job networker LinkedIn and wealth manager Brighton Jones both recently created a director of compassion position.

Experts say this shift is the result of new research showing compassion's impact, as well as an urgent desire to address rising rates of depression and anxiety among young people, and a steep climb of rates of suicide among all ages.

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