DEAR DOCTOR
PLEASE BE KIND
The Neuroscience of Kindness in Medicine
Dear Doctor Please be Kind explores the human foundation of medical care. Drawing on the groundbreaking insights from affective neuroscience, this book shows how evolutionarily well-preserved neural circuits shape trust, communication, and the capacity to cope with illness. Kindness is reframed as a neurobiologically based practice, integral to healing, decision-making, and the doctor-patient relationship.
Because medicine is practiced by people, not by protocols and how a doctor is present matters as much as what a doctor knows.
"With this book, Jeanette has performed a great service for us: us doctors and patients alike"
— Prof. Mark Solms, author of the Preface
"With this book, Jeanette has performed a great service for us: us doctors and patients alike"
Prof. Mark Solms
Professor of Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town · Hon. Lecturer in Neurosurgery, St. Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine
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What you'll find inside
Dear Doctor, Please Be Kind brings affective neuroscience into the consultation room. Drawing on the pioneering work of Jaak Panksepp and Mark Solms, the book reframes kindness not as a soft skill, but as a biological necessity, grounded in the same brain structures that regulate fear, hope, and trust.
Written from two chairs at once, the doctor's and the patient's. The book moves between clinical insight and real, lived experience of cancer care, showing why presence is as much a clinical skill as knowledge.
90%
of what a doctor communicates isn't spoken. It's carried in tone, silence and posture.
PAG
the deep brainstem structure where raw feeling begins, before a thought forms.
Illustrated by the author herself, a doctor who has spent her career studying what patients need most from the people who treat them.
7 Bits
the brain's working-memory limit and fear shrinks it further.
Dopamine
hope activates the same reward pathway as any pleasurable experience.
Communication is an iceberg
The hidden 90%
Only a small fraction of what a doctor conveys is ever spoken. The rest happens below the surface and it's what patients remember most.
10%
90%
Non-verbal · subcortical communication
verbal communication
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What collegues are saying
"This book is what the world has been waiting for."
Klaas Molenkamp
clinical psychologist in medical psychology, supervisor CBT
“The book Why Doctor Need To Be Kind by Jeanette van Dongen I also see as an interdisciplinary exercise a new way of thinking and collaborating between medical psychology and the clinical-somatic disciplines, the doctors.”
Huib van Dis
clinical psychologist in medical psychology
"With this book, Jeanette has performed a great service for us: us doctors and patients alike"
Mark Solms
professor in Neuropsychology University of Cape Town, Hon. Lecturer in Neurosurgery at St. Bartholomew’s and the Royal London School of Medicine.
Flip through the first chapter
LOOK INSIDE
A quick preview of the book's tone, layout and illustrations, before you commit to your own a copy.
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Klinisch Psycholoog
Psychotherapeut
Kinder- en Jeugdpsycholoog Specialist
Jeanette E.W.M. van Dongen-Melman
Jeanette E.W.M. van Dongen-Melman is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, member of the Dutch Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies (VGCt). She works at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Hand Surgery of Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC+) in the Netherlands, an internationally recognized LE&RN Lymphatic Disease Surgery Center of Excellence. Within this multidisciplinary setting, she contributes psychological expertise directly to multidisciplinary long-term follow-up care for cancer related lymphedema.
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Since early in her career, Jeanette has focused on the late effects of cancer and the need for structured survivorship care. Her PhD thesis, On Surviving Childhood Cancer (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, 1995; cum laude), provided early evidence that long-term outcomes extend far beyond survival and highlighted the importance that quality of life can be improved by using all options available to alleviate physical and emotional discomfort, both during and after treatment. Her book Treating Steroid-Induced Behavioral Side Effects in Children. A Parent-training Program demonstrates how targeted psychological interventions can effectively reduce serious medication-related discomfort, thereby improving adherence, family functioning and clinical outcomes. Recently she is using her expertise to raise awareness of the long-term effects of cancer in adults, in particular lymphedema.
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Her current work environment enables new opportunities for creating links between scientific research, patient care and the patient perspective. When illness enters a life, care becomes a shared and complex endeavor. By implementing insights from affective neuroscience into medicine, this book offers a scientifically grounded exploration how care is given and received, illuminating the complex dynamics between doctors and patients. This perspective helps develop practical tools from both medical psychology and medicine that strengthen collaboration between doctors and patients— improving outcomes and experiences for both.
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