Tirth Bhatta (Sociology) and Nirmala Lekhak (Nursing) collaborated with Eva Kahana of the sociology department at Case Western Reserve University and Boaz Kahana to publish a research article, "Loving Others: The Impact of Compassionate Love on Later Life Psychological Well-being," in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. The article concerns the positive impact of compassionate love on later-life psychological well-being. Some of the following information could be included in the news report.
Previous studies on love among older couples have focused on feeling loved and self-love among older married couples. Other related research explored love in the context of romantic or sexual relationships. Consideration of broad loving emotions that reflect human connectedness has been limited in studies of later-life psychological well-being. During the physical and social distancing necessitated by the COVID pandemic, human need for connectedness becomes ever more important. Further, at the current historical time, when expressions of anger and hate pose major societal challenges and when our social solidarity is being dismantled by increasing hyper-individualism or the tendency to “bowl alone”, we consider it to be particularly timely to explore the positive role of compassionate love or loving kindness in our social world.
