Yleinen

From April the 9th to the 20th of April, Nyyti is co-ordinating the Students’ Mental Health Day -campaign to promote important themes in student’s mental health. This year’s theme is compassion. The Mental Health Day is Wednesday 18 April 2018.

So just to give you a short conception of compassion, I thought I would write a little background of my understanding of why compassion is important for ourselves and others in today’s society.

Compassion can be seen through the lens of evolutionary psychology as a function of cooperation and protection of those that suffer in an undeserving way. Through modern technologies we have come to a point of near constant compassion fatigue due to our exposure to compassion invoking images and news stories. This ambivalence to the pain of other humans extends to the creation of the ‘other’ as someone who is undeserving as a human being through arbitrary means, such as place of birth. This is one of the overlooked consequences of modern life and creeps into the way we treat ourselves and others as we become a less compassionate society such as regressive changes in policy like the activation model.

Through research we know that it’s is easier to feel compassion for an individual and their story than for a large group of anonymous individuals. This is a function of our psychological bias that helps to ensure our tribe’s survival over the ‘other’ and helps to create the absence of compassion towards the created ‘other’ as a lesser human life. This aspect is partially portrayed in the black mirror episode ‘men against fire’ where technology is used instead of psychological bias.

So we need to understand ourselves as being human and the way our modern lives affect the way we view of ourselves and others as sometimes undeserving of compassion.

During this compassion campaign let yourself off the hook a little and be more compassionate towards yourself and others, none of us are perfect and we all need compassion in our lives. Try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to find compassion for the other.

We all deserve compassion!

Read more about Students’ Mentalt Health Day.

Follow the campaign on social media with the hashtags:
#opiskelijoidenmielenterveyspäivä and #myötätunnostahyvinvointia

Let yourself off the hook a little and be more compassionate towards yourself and others. None of us are perfect and we all need compassion in our lives.

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