In Need of Better Language: Covitality

In 1992, the Dalai Lama challenged renowned brain scientist, Richard Davidson, with a provocative question, “Why can’t you use the same tools of modern neuroscience to study kindness and compassion in addition to studying depression, anxiety, stress, and fear?” That one inquiry created a major pivot point in brain research and subsequently other disciplines. Over the last twenty-five years we have gained a significant understanding of kindness, compassion, happiness, gratitude, hope, and other positive emotions and behaviors.

We spent the majority of last week with an inspiring group of scientists, scholars, practitioners, and leaders to develop a dialogue and definitions around the epidemiology of compassion and love. This meeting helps mark yet another important pivot point. Epidemiology is normally defined in terms of the study of diseases, specifically the incidence and prevalence of diseases. How do they cluster? How do they spread? This gathering was instead focused on applying those epidemiologic questions to compassion and love.

Conversations at this conference revealed a linguistic gap, which is the simple fact that there is not an antonym for comorbidity, which defines the simultaneous presence of two diseases in a patient. There is not, however, a word that describes the simultaneous presence of two prosocial attributes, such as compassion and love. In order to address this gap, and in part to help further conversations around the epidemiology of compassion and love, we propose “covitality” as the word to represent the positive counterpoint to comorbidity. The good news is that scientists are already looking at the correlation of these positive traits, so all we need now is a word to describe it.

We shared this idea with a number of epidemiologists. There is an agreement that a new term is needed, and “covitality” is a reasonable idea. We’d be very interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions about this proposal for the new word: covitality.

Photo Credit: Romain Vignes on Unsplash.