welcome back everyone
while depression and anxiety are at
record levels in this country and after
struggling with depression most of his
life best-selling author and journalist
Johann Hari decided to investigate the
biological psychological and social
reasons for why he felt like he did lost
connections uncovering the real causes
of depression and the unexpected
solutions is the result of that research
and he joins us now thanks for being
here with us ok so you suffered from
depression basically from as long ago as
you can remember but when I was a
teenager yeah and that's when you were
first medicated for depression correct
yeah what made you decide after your own
experiences to start looking more into
what might be causing it I guess there
were these two mysteries that were
really hanging over me Kim and if I'm
honest I was pretty frightened to look
into them the first mystery is I'm 40
years old every year that I've been
alive depression and anxiety have
increased here in the United States and
across the Western world and I wanted to
understand why why is so many of us
finding it harder each year that goes on
to get through the day and I wanted to
understand it for a more kind of
personal reason like you say when I was
a teenager I remember going to my doctor
and saying that had this feeling like
pain was leaking out of me I couldn't
control it I didn't understand what was
going on and my doctor told me a story I
now realize had some truth in it but was
really oversimplified he said we know
why people feel like this there's it
just some people just naturally have a
problem in their brain a chemical
imbalance you're clearly one of them all
you need to do is take this drug he gave
me paxil you're gonna be fine and I did
feel a really significant boost from
that drug but ultimately I became
depressed again it turns out that's true
actually most people not everyone who's
given these drugs and I was thinking
well I'm doing everything I'm told to do
and I still feel awful what's really
going on here and why is it happening to
so many other people so I ended up going
on this big journey all over the world
over 40,000 miles I wanted to sit with
the leading experts in the world about
what causes depression and anxiety and
just people with really different ways
of thinking about this and I learned
loads of things but the the core of what
I learned is there's scientific evidence
for nine causes of depression and
anxiety two of them are in fact in our
biology we can talk about
but most of them are factors in the way
we live that are going up and once you
understand those different causes opens
up a whole different set of solutions
that I saw being tried all over the
world there should be offered to people
alongside the option of chemical
antidepressants right you're not and
because SSRIs didn't ultimately work for
you you had to keep bumping your dosage
if I remember from your book but
obviously many patients and
neuroscientists believe while we might
not know why they work exactly because
we're still learning about the brain
they do work for many people so you're
saying that a lot of what you found in
this can be in conjunction with taking
SSRIs if those appear to be working for
you as well they gave me some relief but
they didn't ultimately solve the problem
and the evidence shows that's true of
most people who take them but was one
personally really helped me to think
differently about the whole question of
antidepressants I went to interview this
South African psychiatrist called
Derrick Sommerfeld who happened to be in
Cambodia in Asia in 2001 when they first
introduced chemical antidepressants
there and the local doctors the
Cambodians had never heard of these
drugs so they were like what are they
and he explained and they said to him we
don't need them we already have
antidepressants and he was like what do
you mean he thought they were going to
talk about some kind of herbal remedy
like st. John's wort or something
instead they told him a story there was
a farmer in their community who worked
in the rice fields and one day he stood
on a landmine and got I've got his leg
blown off so they gave him an artificial
limb and he went back to work in the
rice fields but apparently it's super
painful to work underwater when you got
an artificial limb I'm guessing it's
traumatic for obvious reasons the guy
starts to cry all day eventually he just
won't get out of bed he doesn't want to
go on living they said to dr. Sommerfeld
the Cambodians well that's when we gave
him an antidepressant and he said what
was it they explained that they went and
sat with him they listened to him they
realized that his depression had causes
in their lives and his life and they
thought well maybe we could solve that
one of them had the idea if we put him a
cow he could become a dairy farmer he
wouldn't be in this position that was
screwing him up so they bought him a cow
within a couple of weeks his crying
stopped within a month his depression
was gone they said to dr. Sommerfeld so
you see doctor that cow that was an
antidepressant that's what you mean
right
now if you've been raised to think about
depression the way we have that it's
just a problem in your brain that sounds
like a joke I went to my doctor for an
antidepressant she gave me a cow but
what those Cambodian doctors knew
intuitively is
a leading medical body in the world the
World Health Organization has been
trying to tell us for years if you're
depressed if you're anxious you're not
weak you're not crazy you're not a
machine with broken parts you're a human
being with unmet needs and what you need
is love and practical support from the
society around you to get those deeper
needs met so a big part of what I'm
asking in my but lost connections is
okay what's the care for the things that
are screwing us up right right we have
very limited time but that is well you
talk about all of these different things
that could be factoring into our lives
from your work environments not being
fulfilling or letting you grow to that
sense of disconnection from other people
disconnection from community if someone
was gonna take one thing away from your
book looking at their own lives to focus
on what would be the one thing you would
tell people look at look here first see
if that's something that you can address
and then look at these other options as
well I would say to them your pain makes
sense you feel these ways for reasons
now when you're in the throes of
depression it because that there's no
reason I remember that very well but we
feel these ways for underlying reasons
and obviously I go through in the book
what these underlying reasons are the
scientific evidence for them but what
we've been doing up to now is we've been
saying all this pain all this distress
is like a glitch in a computer program
if you're told it's just a problem in
your brain it's like oh it's just an
error the pain doesn't mean anything and
the key thing I learned is the leading
experts in the world are telling us your
pain is meaningful it's telling us
something we need to stop insulting that
pain by saying it's either just weakness
or craziness or just a problem in your
brain although there are real biological
elements and start listening to that
pain honoring it and following it to its
source so that we can actually deal with
the underlying problems and I met
doctors and scientists all over the
world who are pioneering producer for
example assigning very lonely people to
gardening programs where they garden
with other people is twice as effective
as giving them chemical antidepressants
in reducing their depression and anxiety
there are real solutions out there they
are waiting for us we need to listen to
the pain and listen to the solutions and
it's great that we're talking about
mental health in general so thank you so
much yes all right when we come back how
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