The Rabbit Effect: Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness by Kelli Harding

This book reveals wonderfully with a mixture of enough scientific pieces of evidence and personal stories why hidden factors outside a hospital are important to human health. As social beings, others, namely community and neighborhood, deeply influence us. A sense of belonging and interconnectedness is critical to our mental health. Long-lasted loneliness and isolation make persons vulnerable to mental illness. Exaggerated, endured stress responses accompanied by stressful daily lives can make persons ill. So, the author maintains that kindness and compassion for others matter and can make humans healthier and happier.

According to this book, humans are 99.9% genetically similar. In that regard, we all are quite similar in genetic make-ups, but some people overestimate racial and ethnic differences. However, race is arbitrary, a sort of social construct, rather than a scientific one, the author argues. Is our hierarchical social structure reflecting the historical and cultural inequity of humans? Or even though it is very slight, biological differences are a primary cause of the hierarchical order of our world? Many intellectuals are mentioning the nonbiological components in humans are the main reason for our current inequality. I also think that we need to focus more on and be sensitive to inequality and discrimination caused by cultural and historical background, as we can make more efforts in such perspective and it is becoming more scientifically evidenced.

Through this book, I became to know the background of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, which was very interesting. The author is saying that instead of asking “What is wrong with you?”, asking “What happened to you?” is a much kinder approach.

This book, written by a psychiatrist, is warm and kind to all readers.

Written by Shim G.