1
00:00:13,355 --> 00:00:14,916
For a really long time,

2
00:00:14,955 --> 00:00:18,076
I had two mysteries
that were hanging over me.

3
00:00:18,675 --> 00:00:20,955
I didn't understand them

4
00:00:20,955 --> 00:00:23,875
and, to be honest, I was quite afraid
to look into them.

5
00:00:24,356 --> 00:00:27,876
The first mystery was, I'm 40 years old,

6
00:00:27,916 --> 00:00:30,996
and all throughout my lifetime,
year after year,

7
00:00:30,995 --> 00:00:34,356
serious depression and anxiety have risen,

8
00:00:34,396 --> 00:00:37,076
in the United States, in Britain,

9
00:00:37,115 --> 00:00:38,875
and across the Western world.

10
00:00:39,155 --> 00:00:42,115
And I wanted to understand why.

11
00:00:43,115 --> 00:00:44,956
Why is this happening to us?

12
00:00:45,396 --> 00:00:48,036
Why is it that with each year that passes,

13
00:00:48,076 --> 00:00:51,316
more and more of us are finding it harder
to get through the day?

14
00:00:51,756 --> 00:00:55,316
And I wanted to understand this
because of a more personal mystery.

15
00:00:55,316 --> 00:00:56,716
When I was a teenager,

16
00:00:56,716 --> 00:00:58,155
I remember going to my doctor

17
00:00:58,195 --> 00:01:02,676
and explaining that I had this feeling,
like pain was leaking out of me.

18
00:01:03,235 --> 00:01:04,635
I couldn't control it,

19
00:01:04,635 --> 00:01:06,955
I didn't understand why it was happening,

20
00:01:06,956 --> 00:01:09,036
I felt quite ashamed of it.

21
00:01:09,036 --> 00:01:10,635
And my doctor told me a story

22
00:01:10,676 --> 00:01:12,676
that I now realize was well-intentioned,

23
00:01:12,715 --> 00:01:14,396
but quite oversimplified.

24
00:01:14,396 --> 00:01:15,596
Not totally wrong.

25
00:01:15,596 --> 00:01:18,396
My doctor said, "We know
why people get like this.

26
00:01:18,436 --> 00:01:22,636
Some people just naturally get
a chemical imbalance in their heads --

27
00:01:22,676 --> 00:01:24,115
you're clearly one of them.

28
00:01:24,115 --> 00:01:26,115
All we need to do is give you some drugs,

29
00:01:26,115 --> 00:01:28,475
it will get your chemical
balance back to normal."

30
00:01:28,516 --> 00:01:30,916
So I started taking a drug
called Paxil or Seroxat,

31
00:01:30,956 --> 00:01:33,996
it's the same thing with different names
in different countries.

32
00:01:33,995 --> 00:01:36,475
And I felt much better,
I got a real boost.

33
00:01:36,516 --> 00:01:37,916
But not very long afterwards,

34
00:01:37,956 --> 00:01:39,956
this feeling of pain started to come back.

35
00:01:39,956 --> 00:01:41,796
So I was given higher and higher doses

36
00:01:41,835 --> 00:01:45,036
until, for 13 years, I was taking
the maximum possible dose

37
00:01:45,075 --> 00:01:47,075
that you're legally allowed to take.

38
00:01:47,396 --> 00:01:50,876
And for a lot of those 13 years,
and pretty much all the time by the end,

39
00:01:50,876 --> 00:01:52,396
I was still in a lot of pain.

40
00:01:52,396 --> 00:01:55,396
And I started asking myself,
"What's going on here?

41
00:01:55,396 --> 00:01:56,956
Because you're doing everything

42
00:01:56,995 --> 00:02:00,115
you're told to do by the story
that's dominating the culture --

43
00:02:00,156 --> 00:02:02,276
why do you still feel like this?"

44
00:02:02,275 --> 00:02:05,155
So to get to the bottom
of these two mysteries,

45
00:02:05,195 --> 00:02:06,596
for a book that I've written

46
00:02:06,635 --> 00:02:09,115
I ended up going on a big journey
all over the world,

47
00:02:09,156 --> 00:02:10,556
I traveled over 40,000 miles.

48
00:02:10,596 --> 00:02:13,075
I wanted to sit with the leading
experts in the world

49
00:02:13,116 --> 00:02:15,276
about what causes depression and anxiety

50
00:02:15,316 --> 00:02:17,156
and crucially, what solves them,

51
00:02:17,195 --> 00:02:19,835
and people who have come through
depression and anxiety

52
00:02:19,836 --> 00:02:21,956
and out the other side
in all sorts of ways.

53
00:02:21,955 --> 00:02:23,475
And I learned a huge amount

54
00:02:23,475 --> 00:02:26,036
from the amazing people
I got to know along the way.

55
00:02:26,075 --> 00:02:29,036
But I think at the heart
of what I learned is,

56
00:02:29,075 --> 00:02:32,115
so far, we have scientific evidence

57
00:02:32,116 --> 00:02:35,836
for nine different causes
of depression and anxiety.

58
00:02:35,836 --> 00:02:38,676
Two of them are indeed in our biology.

59
00:02:38,675 --> 00:02:41,355
Your genes can make you
more sensitive to these problems,

60
00:02:41,395 --> 00:02:43,315
though they don't write your destiny.

61
00:02:43,355 --> 00:02:46,955
And there are real brain changes
that can happen when you become depressed

62
00:02:46,996 --> 00:02:48,676
that can make it harder to get out.

63
00:02:48,716 --> 00:02:50,876
But most of the factors
that have been proven

64
00:02:50,915 --> 00:02:52,756
to cause depression and anxiety

65
00:02:52,795 --> 00:02:54,555
are not in our biology.

66
00:02:55,515 --> 00:02:57,715
They are factors in the way we live.

67
00:02:58,116 --> 00:02:59,596
And once you understand them,

68
00:02:59,635 --> 00:03:02,716
it opens up a very different
set of solutions

69
00:03:02,756 --> 00:03:04,276
that should be offered to people

70
00:03:04,316 --> 00:03:07,276
alongside the option
of chemical antidepressants.

71
00:03:07,276 --> 00:03:09,076
For example,

72
00:03:09,116 --> 00:03:12,556
if you're lonely, you're more likely
to become depressed.

73
00:03:12,556 --> 00:03:15,676
If, when you go to work,
you don't have any control over your job,

74
00:03:15,716 --> 00:03:17,596
you've just got to do what you're told,

75
00:03:17,635 --> 00:03:19,515
you're more likely to become depressed.

76
00:03:19,556 --> 00:03:22,036
If you very rarely get out
into the natural world,

77
00:03:22,036 --> 00:03:23,915
you're more likely to become depressed.

78
00:03:23,955 --> 00:03:27,036
And one thing unites a lot of the causes
of depression and anxiety

79
00:03:27,075 --> 00:03:28,235
that I learned about.

80
00:03:28,276 --> 00:03:30,316
Not all of them, but a lot of them.

81
00:03:30,355 --> 00:03:32,036
Everyone here knows

82
00:03:32,036 --> 00:03:34,716
you've all got natural
physical needs, right?

83
00:03:34,716 --> 00:03:35,915
Obviously.

84
00:03:35,915 --> 00:03:38,515
You need food, you need water,

85
00:03:38,515 --> 00:03:40,756
you need shelter, you need clean air.

86
00:03:40,795 --> 00:03:42,596
If I took those things away from you,

87
00:03:42,596 --> 00:03:44,915
you'd all be in real trouble, real fast.

88
00:03:44,915 --> 00:03:46,716
But at the same time,

89
00:03:46,756 --> 00:03:50,116
every human being
has natural psychological needs.

90
00:03:50,156 --> 00:03:52,195
You need to feel you belong.

91
00:03:52,195 --> 00:03:55,276
You need to feel your life
has meaning and purpose.

92
00:03:55,276 --> 00:03:57,836
You need to feel that people
see you and value you.

93
00:03:57,836 --> 00:04:00,396
You need to feel you've got
a future that makes sense.

94
00:04:00,436 --> 00:04:03,475
And this culture we built
is good at lots of things.

95
00:04:03,515 --> 00:04:05,675
And many things are better
than in the past --

96
00:04:05,675 --> 00:04:06,995
I'm glad to be alive today.

97
00:04:07,036 --> 00:04:08,996
But we've been getting less and less good

98
00:04:09,036 --> 00:04:13,116
at meeting these deep,
underlying psychological needs.

99
00:04:13,876 --> 00:04:15,996
And it's not the only thing
that's going on,

100
00:04:16,036 --> 00:04:20,076
but I think it's the key reason
why this crisis keeps rising and rising.

101
00:04:20,915 --> 00:04:24,156
And I found this really hard to absorb.

102
00:04:24,156 --> 00:04:26,876
I really wrestled with the idea

103
00:04:26,915 --> 00:04:31,315
of shifting from thinking of my depression
as just a problem in my brain,

104
00:04:31,315 --> 00:04:32,515
to one with many causes,

105
00:04:32,516 --> 00:04:34,596
including many in the way we're living.

106
00:04:34,596 --> 00:04:36,956
And it only really began
to fall into place for me

107
00:04:36,995 --> 00:04:40,156
when one day, I went to interview
a South African psychiatrist

108
00:04:40,156 --> 00:04:41,956
named Dr. Derek Summerfield.

109
00:04:41,995 --> 00:04:43,156
He's a great guy.

110
00:04:43,156 --> 00:04:46,876
And Dr. Summerfield
happened to be in Cambodia in 2001,

111
00:04:46,915 --> 00:04:50,195
when they first introduced
chemical antidepressants

112
00:04:50,235 --> 00:04:51,956
for people in that country.

113
00:04:51,956 --> 00:04:55,276
And the local doctors, the Cambodians,
had never heard of these drugs,

114
00:04:55,276 --> 00:04:56,876
so they were like, what are they?

115
00:04:56,915 --> 00:04:58,115
And he explained.

116
00:04:58,156 --> 00:04:59,675
And they said to him,

117
00:04:59,716 --> 00:05:02,396
"We don't need them,
we've already got antidepressants."

118
00:05:02,435 --> 00:05:04,156
And he was like, "What do you mean?"

119
00:05:04,196 --> 00:05:07,436
He thought they were going to talk about
some kind of herbal remedy,

120
00:05:07,435 --> 00:05:11,235
like St. John's Wort, ginkgo biloba,
something like that.

121
00:05:11,915 --> 00:05:14,276
Instead, they told him a story.

122
00:05:14,795 --> 00:05:18,355
There was a farmer in their community
who worked in the rice fields.

123
00:05:18,396 --> 00:05:20,156
And one day, he stood on a land mine

124
00:05:20,196 --> 00:05:22,396
left over from the war
with the United States,

125
00:05:22,396 --> 00:05:23,836
and he got his leg blown off.

126
00:05:23,836 --> 00:05:25,276
So they him an artificial leg,

127
00:05:25,315 --> 00:05:28,075
and after a while, he went back
to work in the rice fields.

128
00:05:28,115 --> 00:05:30,635
But apparently, it's super painful
to work under water

129
00:05:30,636 --> 00:05:32,316
when you've got an artificial limb,

130
00:05:32,355 --> 00:05:34,276
and I'm guessing it was pretty traumatic

131
00:05:34,315 --> 00:05:36,875
to go back and work in the field
where he got blown up.

132
00:05:36,915 --> 00:05:39,315
The guy started to cry all day,

133
00:05:39,315 --> 00:05:40,755
he refused to get out of bed,

134
00:05:40,795 --> 00:05:43,675
he developed all the symptoms
of classic depression.

135
00:05:43,995 --> 00:05:45,355
The Cambodian doctor said,

136
00:05:45,396 --> 00:05:47,675
"This is when we gave him
an antidepressant."

137
00:05:47,716 --> 00:05:50,355
And Dr. Summerfield said,
"What was it?"

138
00:05:50,355 --> 00:05:53,195
They explained that they went
and sat with him.

139
00:05:53,995 --> 00:05:55,395
They listened to him.

140
00:05:56,475 --> 00:05:58,995
They realized that his pain made sense --

141
00:05:59,036 --> 00:06:01,956
it was hard for him to see it
in the throes of his depression,

142
00:06:01,995 --> 00:06:05,635
but actually, it had perfectly
understandable causes in his life.

143
00:06:05,956 --> 00:06:09,156
One of the doctors, talking to the people
in the community, figured,

144
00:06:09,196 --> 00:06:11,116
"You know, if we bought this guy a cow,

145
00:06:11,156 --> 00:06:13,156
he could become a dairy farmer,

146
00:06:13,156 --> 00:06:16,276
he wouldn't be in this position
that was screwing him up so much,

147
00:06:16,276 --> 00:06:18,795
he wouldn't have to go
and work in the rice fields."

148
00:06:18,836 --> 00:06:20,036
So they bought him a cow.

149
00:06:20,036 --> 00:06:22,235
Within a couple of weeks,
his crying stopped,

150
00:06:22,235 --> 00:06:24,156
within a month, his depression was gone.

151
00:06:24,196 --> 00:06:25,756
They said to doctor Summerfield,

152
00:06:25,795 --> 00:06:28,555
"So you see, doctor, that cow,
that was an antidepressant,

153
00:06:28,596 --> 00:06:30,036
that's what you mean, right?"

154
00:06:30,076 --> 00:06:31,236
(Laughter)

155
00:06:31,235 --> 00:06:34,315
(Applause)

156
00:06:34,315 --> 00:06:37,195
If you'd been raised to think
about depression the way I was,

157
00:06:37,235 --> 00:06:38,836
and most of the people here were,

158
00:06:38,836 --> 00:06:40,516
that sounds like a bad joke, right?

159
00:06:40,555 --> 00:06:42,596
"I went to my doctor
for an antidepressant,

160
00:06:42,596 --> 00:06:43,756
she gave me a cow."

161
00:06:43,795 --> 00:06:46,836
But what those Cambodian
doctors knew intuitively,

162
00:06:46,836 --> 00:06:49,836
based on this individual,
unscientific anecdote,

163
00:06:49,836 --> 00:06:53,115
is what the leading
medical body in the world,

164
00:06:53,156 --> 00:06:55,235
the World Health Organization,

165
00:06:55,276 --> 00:06:57,436
has been trying to tell us for years,

166
00:06:57,475 --> 00:06:59,956
based on the best scientific evidence.

167
00:07:00,555 --> 00:07:02,515
If you're depressed,

168
00:07:02,516 --> 00:07:03,915
if you're anxious,

169
00:07:04,995 --> 00:07:08,275
you're not weak, you're not crazy,

170
00:07:08,276 --> 00:07:11,876
you're not, in the main,
a machine with broken parts.

171
00:07:12,956 --> 00:07:15,475
You're a human being with unmet needs.

172
00:07:15,915 --> 00:07:19,435
And it's just as important to think here
about what those Cambodian doctors

173
00:07:19,475 --> 00:07:21,795
and the World Health Organization
are not saying.

174
00:07:21,836 --> 00:07:23,355
They did not say to this farmer,

175
00:07:23,396 --> 00:07:26,196
"Hey, buddy, you need
to pull yourself together.

176
00:07:26,196 --> 00:07:29,475
It's your job to figure out
and fix this problem on your own."

177
00:07:29,836 --> 00:07:31,836
On the contrary, what they said is,

178
00:07:31,875 --> 00:07:35,395
"We're here as a group
to pull together with you,

179
00:07:35,396 --> 00:07:39,836
so together, we can figure out
and fix this problem."

180
00:07:40,555 --> 00:07:44,555
This is what every depressed person needs,

181
00:07:44,596 --> 00:07:47,836
and it's what every
depressed person deserves.

182
00:07:47,836 --> 00:07:50,836
This is why one of the leading
doctors at the United Nations,

183
00:07:50,875 --> 00:07:53,195
in their official statement
for World Health Day,

184
00:07:53,196 --> 00:07:54,676
couple of years back in 2017,

185
00:07:54,716 --> 00:07:57,516
said we need to talk less
about chemical imbalances

186
00:07:57,555 --> 00:08:00,596
and more about the imbalances
in the way we live.

187
00:08:00,915 --> 00:08:02,875
Drugs give real relief to some people --

188
00:08:02,915 --> 00:08:05,036
they gave relief to me for a while --

189
00:08:05,076 --> 00:08:09,475
but precisely because this problem
goes deeper than their biology,

190
00:08:09,516 --> 00:08:12,556
the solutions need to go much deeper, too.

191
00:08:12,596 --> 00:08:15,196
But when I first learned that,

192
00:08:15,196 --> 00:08:16,876
I remember thinking,

193
00:08:16,915 --> 00:08:19,036
"OK, I could see
all the scientific evidence,

194
00:08:19,076 --> 00:08:20,636
I read a huge number of studies,

195
00:08:20,675 --> 00:08:23,955
I interviewed a huge number of the experts
who were explaining this,"

196
00:08:23,995 --> 00:08:26,395
but I kept thinking, "How can we
possibly do that?"

197
00:08:26,396 --> 00:08:28,316
The things that are making us depressed

198
00:08:28,355 --> 00:08:30,836
are in most cases more complex
than what was going on

199
00:08:30,836 --> 00:08:32,156
with this Cambodian farmer.

200
00:08:32,155 --> 00:08:34,795
Where do we even begin with that insight?

201
00:08:34,836 --> 00:08:38,076
But then, in the long journey for my book,

202
00:08:38,115 --> 00:08:39,675
all over the world,

203
00:08:39,716 --> 00:08:42,275
I kept meeting people
who were doing exactly that,

204
00:08:42,316 --> 00:08:44,756
from Sydney, to San Francisco,

205
00:08:44,796 --> 00:08:45,956
to São Paulo.

206
00:08:45,995 --> 00:08:48,076
I kept meeting people
who were understanding

207
00:08:48,076 --> 00:08:50,436
the deeper causes
of depression and anxiety

208
00:08:50,436 --> 00:08:52,876
and, as groups, fixing them.

209
00:08:52,875 --> 00:08:55,555
Obviously, I can't tell you
about all the amazing people

210
00:08:55,596 --> 00:08:57,076
I got to know and wrote about,

211
00:08:57,115 --> 00:09:00,556
or all of the nine causes of depression
and anxiety that I learned about,

212
00:09:00,556 --> 00:09:03,036
because they won't let me give
a 10-hour TED Talk --

213
00:09:03,076 --> 00:09:04,836
you can complain about that to them.

214
00:09:04,836 --> 00:09:06,796
But I want to focus on two of the causes

215
00:09:06,796 --> 00:09:10,236
and two of the solutions
that emerge from them, if that's alright.

216
00:09:10,556 --> 00:09:11,716
Here's the first.

217
00:09:12,275 --> 00:09:15,275
We are the loneliest society
in human history.

218
00:09:15,316 --> 00:09:18,156
There was a recent study
that asked Americans,

219
00:09:18,155 --> 00:09:21,315
"Do you feel like you're no longer
close to anyone?"

220
00:09:21,355 --> 00:09:24,995
And 39 percent of people
said that described them.

221
00:09:25,035 --> 00:09:26,395
"No longer close to anyone."

222
00:09:26,395 --> 00:09:28,915
In the international
measurements of loneliness,

223
00:09:28,916 --> 00:09:31,475
Britain and the rest of Europe
are just behind the US,

224
00:09:31,515 --> 00:09:33,275
in case anyone here is feeling smug.

225
00:09:33,316 --> 00:09:34,316
(Laughter)

226
00:09:34,355 --> 00:09:36,235
I spent a lot of time discussing this

227
00:09:36,275 --> 00:09:38,675
with the leading expert
in the world on loneliness,

228
00:09:38,676 --> 00:09:40,956
an incredible man
named professor John Cacioppo,

229
00:09:40,956 --> 00:09:42,115
who was at Chicago,

230
00:09:42,155 --> 00:09:44,955
and I thought a lot about one question
his work poses to us.

231
00:09:44,995 --> 00:09:47,275
Professor Cacioppo asked,

232
00:09:47,316 --> 00:09:48,956
"Why do we exist?

233
00:09:48,995 --> 00:09:50,956
Why are we here, why are we alive?"

234
00:09:50,956 --> 00:09:53,156
One key reason

235
00:09:53,196 --> 00:09:55,995
is that our ancestors
on the savannas of Africa

236
00:09:56,035 --> 00:09:57,755
were really good at one thing.

237
00:09:58,275 --> 00:10:01,555
They weren't bigger than the animals
they took down a lot of the time,

238
00:10:01,596 --> 00:10:04,916
they weren't faster than the animals
they took down a lot of the time,

239
00:10:04,916 --> 00:10:07,636
but they were much better
at banding together into groups

240
00:10:07,676 --> 00:10:09,276
and cooperating.

241
00:10:09,275 --> 00:10:11,555
This was our superpower as a species --

242
00:10:11,596 --> 00:10:12,995
we band together,

243
00:10:12,995 --> 00:10:15,475
just like bees evolved to live in a hive,

244
00:10:15,515 --> 00:10:17,755
humans evolved to live in a tribe.

245
00:10:17,755 --> 00:10:21,596
And we are the first humans ever

246
00:10:22,475 --> 00:10:23,956
to disband our tribes.

247
00:10:24,475 --> 00:10:26,556
And it is making us feel awful.

248
00:10:27,035 --> 00:10:29,195
But it doesn't have to be this way.

249
00:10:29,196 --> 00:10:31,836
One of the heroes in my book,
and in fact, in my life,

250
00:10:31,875 --> 00:10:33,956
is a doctor named Sam Everington.

251
00:10:33,995 --> 00:10:36,716
He's a general practitioner
in a poor part of East London,

252
00:10:36,755 --> 00:10:38,315
where I lived for many years.

253
00:10:38,355 --> 00:10:40,035
And Sam was really uncomfortable,

254
00:10:40,076 --> 00:10:41,635
because he had loads of patients

255
00:10:41,635 --> 00:10:44,076
coming to him with terrible
depression and anxiety.

256
00:10:44,115 --> 00:10:46,836
And like me, he's not opposed
to chemical antidepressants,

257
00:10:46,875 --> 00:10:49,076
he thinks they give
some relief to some people.

258
00:10:49,115 --> 00:10:50,475
But he could see two things.

259
00:10:50,515 --> 00:10:54,075
Firstly, his patients were depressed
and anxious a lot of the time

260
00:10:54,076 --> 00:10:57,836
for totally understandable
reasons, like loneliness.

261
00:10:57,836 --> 00:11:01,276
And secondly, although the drugs
were giving some relief to some people,

262
00:11:01,316 --> 00:11:03,596
for many people,
they didn't solve the problem.

263
00:11:03,596 --> 00:11:05,155
The underlying problem.

264
00:11:05,875 --> 00:11:08,515
One day, Sam decided
to pioneer a different approach.

265
00:11:08,556 --> 00:11:10,996
A woman came to his center,
his medical center,

266
00:11:11,035 --> 00:11:12,475
called Lisa Cunningham.

267
00:11:12,515 --> 00:11:14,395
I got to know Lisa later.

268
00:11:14,395 --> 00:11:18,475
And Lisa had been shut away in her home
with crippling depression and anxiety

269
00:11:18,515 --> 00:11:19,675
for seven years.

270
00:11:20,875 --> 00:11:23,836
And when she came to Sam's center,
she was told, "Don't worry,

271
00:11:23,836 --> 00:11:25,676
we'll carry on giving you these drugs,

272
00:11:25,716 --> 00:11:28,475
but we're also going to prescribe
something else.

273
00:11:28,515 --> 00:11:31,956
We're going to prescribe for you
to come here to this center twice a week

274
00:11:31,995 --> 00:11:34,755
to meet with a group of other
depressed and anxious people,

275
00:11:34,796 --> 00:11:37,596
not to talk about how miserable you are,

276
00:11:37,635 --> 00:11:41,155
but to figure out something
meaningful you can all do together

277
00:11:41,196 --> 00:11:44,276
so you won't be lonely and you won't feel
like life is pointless."

278
00:11:44,316 --> 00:11:47,076
The first time this group met,

279
00:11:47,115 --> 00:11:49,355
Lisa literally started
vomiting with anxiety,

280
00:11:49,395 --> 00:11:51,315
it was so overwhelming for her.

281
00:11:51,355 --> 00:11:53,995
But people rubbed her back,
the group started talking,

282
00:11:53,995 --> 00:11:55,675
they were like, "What could we do?"

283
00:11:55,716 --> 00:11:57,995
These are inner-city,
East London people like me,

284
00:11:58,035 --> 00:12:00,075
they didn't know anything about gardening.

285
00:12:00,076 --> 00:12:02,316
They were like, "Why don't we
learn gardening?"

286
00:12:02,355 --> 00:12:04,515
There was an area
behind the doctors' offices

287
00:12:04,556 --> 00:12:05,716
that was just scrubland.

288
00:12:05,716 --> 00:12:07,596
"Why don't we make this into a garden?"

289
00:12:07,635 --> 00:12:09,795
They started to take books
out of the library,

290
00:12:09,836 --> 00:12:11,316
started to watch YouTube clips.

291
00:12:11,355 --> 00:12:13,515
They started to get
their fingers in the soil.

292
00:12:13,836 --> 00:12:16,875
They started to learn
the rhythms of the seasons.

293
00:12:16,916 --> 00:12:18,236
There's a lot of evidence

294
00:12:18,275 --> 00:12:19,875
that exposure to the natural world

295
00:12:19,916 --> 00:12:21,876
is a really powerful antidepressant.

296
00:12:21,916 --> 00:12:24,916
But they started to do something
even more important.

297
00:12:25,355 --> 00:12:27,355
They started to form a tribe.

298
00:12:27,395 --> 00:12:29,195
They started to form a group.

299
00:12:29,235 --> 00:12:31,275
They started to care about each other.

300
00:12:31,275 --> 00:12:32,955
If one of them didn't show up,

301
00:12:32,995 --> 00:12:35,515
the others would go
looking for them -- "Are you OK?"

302
00:12:35,515 --> 00:12:38,115
Help them figure out
what was troubling them that day.

303
00:12:38,155 --> 00:12:39,955
The way Lisa put it to me,

304
00:12:39,995 --> 00:12:42,596
"As the garden began to bloom,

305
00:12:42,596 --> 00:12:43,875
we began to bloom."

306
00:12:44,475 --> 00:12:46,515
This approach is called
social prescribing,

307
00:12:46,515 --> 00:12:48,035
it's spreading all over Europe.

308
00:12:48,076 --> 00:12:50,355
And there's a small,
but growing body of evidence

309
00:12:50,395 --> 00:12:53,275
suggesting it can produce real
and meaningful falls

310
00:12:53,275 --> 00:12:55,275
in depression and anxiety.

311
00:12:55,316 --> 00:12:59,036
And one day, I remember
standing in the garden

312
00:12:59,035 --> 00:13:01,515
that Lisa and her once-depressed
friends had built --

313
00:13:01,556 --> 00:13:03,115
it's a really beautiful garden --

314
00:13:03,155 --> 00:13:04,355
and having this thought,

315
00:13:04,355 --> 00:13:08,235
it's very much inspired by a guy
called professor Hugh Mackay in Australia.

316
00:13:08,275 --> 00:13:12,635
I was thinking, so often
when people feel down in this culture,

317
00:13:12,676 --> 00:13:15,716
what we say to them -- I'm sure
everyone here said it, I have --

318
00:13:15,755 --> 00:13:18,995
we say, "You just need
to be you, be yourself."

319
00:13:19,755 --> 00:13:22,675
And I've realized, actually,
what we should say to people is,

320
00:13:22,716 --> 00:13:23,875
"Don't be you.

321
00:13:24,316 --> 00:13:25,636
Don't be yourself.

322
00:13:26,196 --> 00:13:28,436
Be us, be we.

323
00:13:28,755 --> 00:13:30,076
Be part of a group."

324
00:13:30,115 --> 00:13:33,836
(Applause)

325
00:13:33,836 --> 00:13:36,436
The solution to these problems

326
00:13:36,436 --> 00:13:39,596
does not lie in drawing
more and more on your resources

327
00:13:39,635 --> 00:13:41,076
as an isolated individual --

328
00:13:41,076 --> 00:13:43,115
that's partly what got us in this crisis.

329
00:13:43,155 --> 00:13:45,915
It lies on reconnecting
with something bigger than you.

330
00:13:45,916 --> 00:13:48,356
And that really connects
to one of the other causes

331
00:13:48,355 --> 00:13:51,275
of depression and anxiety
that I wanted to talk to you about.

332
00:13:51,275 --> 00:13:52,995
So everyone knows

333
00:13:52,995 --> 00:13:56,755
junk food has taken over our diets
and made us physically sick.

334
00:13:56,755 --> 00:13:58,995
I don't say that
with any sense of superiority,

335
00:13:58,995 --> 00:14:01,395
I literally came to give
this talk from McDonald's.

336
00:14:01,436 --> 00:14:04,956
I saw all of you eating that
healthy TED breakfast, I was like no way.

337
00:14:04,956 --> 00:14:10,115
But just like junk food has taken over
our diets and made us physically sick,

338
00:14:10,115 --> 00:14:14,235
a kind of junk values
have taken over our minds

339
00:14:14,275 --> 00:14:15,755
and made us mentally sick.

340
00:14:16,155 --> 00:14:19,275
For thousands of years,
philosophers have said,

341
00:14:19,275 --> 00:14:23,875
if you think life is about money,
and status and showing off,

342
00:14:23,875 --> 00:14:25,435
you're going to feel like crap.

343
00:14:25,436 --> 00:14:27,516
That's not an exact quote
from Schopenhauer,

344
00:14:27,515 --> 00:14:29,315
but that is the gist of what he said.

345
00:14:29,316 --> 00:14:32,355
But weirdly, hardy anyone
had scientifically investigated this,

346
00:14:32,395 --> 00:14:36,035
until a truly extraordinary person
I got to know, named professor Tim Kasser,

347
00:14:36,035 --> 00:14:38,355
who's at Knox College in Illinois,

348
00:14:38,355 --> 00:14:40,915
and he's been researching this
for about 30 years now.

349
00:14:40,956 --> 00:14:43,956
And his research suggests
several really important things.

350
00:14:43,995 --> 00:14:47,196
Firstly, the more you believe

351
00:14:47,196 --> 00:14:51,556
you can buy and display
your way out of sadness,

352
00:14:51,596 --> 00:14:53,796
and into a good life,

353
00:14:53,796 --> 00:14:56,716
the more likely you are to become
depressed and anxious.

354
00:14:56,755 --> 00:14:58,035
And secondly,

355
00:14:58,076 --> 00:15:02,635
as a society, we have become
much more driven by these beliefs.

356
00:15:02,676 --> 00:15:04,076
All throughout my lifetime,

357
00:15:04,115 --> 00:15:08,316
under the weight of advertising
and Instagram and everything like them.

358
00:15:08,875 --> 00:15:10,235
And as I thought about this,

359
00:15:10,275 --> 00:15:16,035
I realized it's like we've all been fed
since birth, a kind of KFC for the soul.

360
00:15:16,035 --> 00:15:19,915
We've been trained to look for happiness
in all the wrong places,

361
00:15:19,956 --> 00:15:22,716
and just like junk food
doesn't meet your nutritional needs

362
00:15:22,755 --> 00:15:25,035
and actually makes you feel terrible,

363
00:15:25,076 --> 00:15:28,196
junk values don't meet
your psychological needs,

364
00:15:28,235 --> 00:15:30,875
and they take you away from a good life.

365
00:15:30,875 --> 00:15:33,515
But when I first spent time
with professor Kasser

366
00:15:33,556 --> 00:15:35,036
and I was learning all this,

367
00:15:35,035 --> 00:15:37,635
I felt a really weird mixture of emotions.

368
00:15:37,635 --> 00:15:40,355
Because on the one hand,
I found this really challenging.

369
00:15:40,355 --> 00:15:43,635
I could see how often
in my own life, when I felt down,

370
00:15:43,635 --> 00:15:48,915
I tried to remedy it with some kind of
show-offy, grand external solution.

371
00:15:49,436 --> 00:15:52,115
And I could see why that
did not work well for me.

372
00:15:52,916 --> 00:15:55,796
I also thought,
isn't this kind of obvious?

373
00:15:55,836 --> 00:15:57,596
Isn't this almost like banal, right?

374
00:15:57,596 --> 00:15:58,916
If I said to everyone here,

375
00:15:58,956 --> 00:16:01,076
none of you are going to lie
on your deathbed

376
00:16:01,115 --> 00:16:04,436
and think about all the shoes you bought
and all the retweets you got,

377
00:16:04,475 --> 00:16:06,155
you're going to think about moments

378
00:16:06,155 --> 00:16:08,275
of love, meaning
and connection in your life.

379
00:16:08,316 --> 00:16:10,235
I think that seems almost like a cliché.

380
00:16:10,275 --> 00:16:12,635
But I kept talking
to professor Kasser and saying,

381
00:16:12,635 --> 00:16:14,995
"Why am I feeling
this strange doubleness?"

382
00:16:15,035 --> 00:16:18,835
And he said, "At some level,
we all know these things.

383
00:16:18,836 --> 00:16:21,235
But in this culture,
we don't live by them."

384
00:16:21,235 --> 00:16:23,316
We know them so well
they've become clichés,

385
00:16:23,355 --> 00:16:24,635
but we don't live by them.

386
00:16:24,635 --> 00:16:27,875
I kept asking why, why would we know
something so profound,

387
00:16:27,875 --> 00:16:29,155
but not live by it?

388
00:16:29,196 --> 00:16:32,596
And after a while,
professor Kasser said to me,

389
00:16:32,635 --> 00:16:35,035
"Because we live in a machine

390
00:16:35,076 --> 00:16:38,796
that is designed to get us to neglect
what is important about life."

391
00:16:39,275 --> 00:16:40,835
I had to really think about that.

392
00:16:40,875 --> 00:16:42,275
"Because we live in a machine

393
00:16:42,316 --> 00:16:45,956
that is designed to get us
to neglect what is important about life."

394
00:16:46,275 --> 00:16:50,075
And professor Kasser wanted to figure out
if we can disrupt that machine.

395
00:16:50,115 --> 00:16:51,956
He's done loads of research into this;

396
00:16:51,995 --> 00:16:53,555
I'll tell you about one example,

397
00:16:53,556 --> 00:16:57,076
and I really urge everyone here
to try this with their friends and family.

398
00:16:57,115 --> 00:17:00,436
With a guy called Nathan Dungan,
he got a group of teenagers and adults

399
00:17:00,475 --> 00:17:04,675
to come together for a series of sessions
over a period of time, to meet up.

400
00:17:04,715 --> 00:17:06,475
And part of the point of the group

401
00:17:06,476 --> 00:17:09,796
was to get people to think
about a moment in their life

402
00:17:09,796 --> 00:17:12,556
they had actually found
meaning and purpose.

403
00:17:12,596 --> 00:17:14,715
For different people,
it was different things.

404
00:17:14,756 --> 00:17:18,355
For some people, it was playing music,
writing, helping someone --

405
00:17:18,395 --> 00:17:21,195
I'm sure everyone here
can picture something, right?

406
00:17:21,236 --> 00:17:24,116
And part of the point of the group
was to get people to ask,

407
00:17:24,115 --> 00:17:26,875
"OK, how could you dedicate
more of your life

408
00:17:26,915 --> 00:17:29,596
to pursuing these moments
of meaning and purpose,

409
00:17:29,596 --> 00:17:32,556
and less to, I don't know,
buying crap you don't need,

410
00:17:32,596 --> 00:17:35,316
putting it on social media
and trying to get people to go,

411
00:17:35,316 --> 00:17:36,596
'OMG, so jealous!'"

412
00:17:36,955 --> 00:17:38,596
And what they found was,

413
00:17:38,635 --> 00:17:39,955
just having these meetings,

414
00:17:39,996 --> 00:17:43,076
it was like a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous
for consumerism, right?

415
00:17:43,796 --> 00:17:46,756
Getting people to have these meetings,
articulate these values,

416
00:17:46,796 --> 00:17:49,316
determine to act on them
and check in with each other,

417
00:17:49,316 --> 00:17:52,196
led to a marked shift in people's values.

418
00:17:52,236 --> 00:17:56,636
It took them away from this hurricane
of depression-generating messages

419
00:17:56,635 --> 00:17:59,276
training us to seek happiness
in the wrong places,

420
00:17:59,316 --> 00:18:02,635
and towards more meaningful
and nourishing values

421
00:18:02,675 --> 00:18:04,675
that lift us out of depression.

422
00:18:05,355 --> 00:18:08,635
But with all the solutions that I saw
and have written about,

423
00:18:08,675 --> 00:18:11,395
and many I can't talk about here,

424
00:18:11,435 --> 00:18:12,795
I kept thinking,

425
00:18:12,836 --> 00:18:16,516
you know: Why did it take me so long
to see these insights?

426
00:18:16,556 --> 00:18:18,556
Because when you explain them to people --

427
00:18:18,596 --> 00:18:21,036
some of them are more
complicated, but not all --

428
00:18:21,076 --> 00:18:24,316
when you explain this to people,
it's not like rocket science, right?

429
00:18:24,316 --> 00:18:26,435
At some level, we already
know these things.

430
00:18:26,435 --> 00:18:29,076
Why do we find it so hard to understand?

431
00:18:29,115 --> 00:18:31,036
I think there's many reasons.

432
00:18:31,476 --> 00:18:35,756
But I think one reason is
that we have to change our understanding

433
00:18:35,756 --> 00:18:39,196
of what depression
and anxiety actually are.

434
00:18:39,756 --> 00:18:41,956
There are very real
biological contributions

435
00:18:41,996 --> 00:18:43,716
to depression and anxiety.

436
00:18:44,115 --> 00:18:47,875
But if we allow the biology
to become the whole picture,

437
00:18:47,875 --> 00:18:49,155
as I did for so long,

438
00:18:49,155 --> 00:18:53,235
as I would argue our culture
has done pretty much most of my life,

439
00:18:53,236 --> 00:18:57,116
what we're implicitly saying to people
is, and this isn't anyone's intention,

440
00:18:57,115 --> 00:19:00,155
but what we're implicitly
saying to people is,

441
00:19:00,195 --> 00:19:02,475
"Your pain doesn't mean anything.

442
00:19:02,516 --> 00:19:03,956
It's just a malfunction.

443
00:19:03,996 --> 00:19:06,436
It's like a glitch in a computer program,

444
00:19:06,476 --> 00:19:09,156
it's just a wiring problem in your head."

445
00:19:10,076 --> 00:19:13,155
But I was only able to start
changing my life

446
00:19:13,195 --> 00:19:17,235
when I realized your depression
is not a malfunction.

447
00:19:18,596 --> 00:19:19,756
It's a signal.

448
00:19:20,675 --> 00:19:22,675
Your depression is a signal.

449
00:19:23,076 --> 00:19:24,915
It's telling you something.

450
00:19:24,955 --> 00:19:29,555
(Applause)

451
00:19:29,556 --> 00:19:31,956
We feel this way for reasons,

452
00:19:31,996 --> 00:19:34,716
and they can be hard to see
in the throes of depression --

453
00:19:34,715 --> 00:19:37,315
I understand that really well
from personal experience.

454
00:19:37,355 --> 00:19:40,836
But with the right help,
we can understand these problems

455
00:19:40,875 --> 00:19:43,355
and we can fix these problems together.

456
00:19:43,355 --> 00:19:44,556
But to do that,

457
00:19:44,596 --> 00:19:46,316
the very first step

458
00:19:46,355 --> 00:19:48,955
is we have to stop insulting these signals

459
00:19:48,996 --> 00:19:53,196
by saying they're a sign of weakness,
or madness or purely biological,

460
00:19:53,195 --> 00:19:55,115
except for a tiny number of people.

461
00:19:55,155 --> 00:19:58,796
We need to start
listening to these signals,

462
00:19:58,796 --> 00:20:02,076
because they're telling us
something we really need to hear.

463
00:20:02,516 --> 00:20:07,516
It's only when we truly
listen to these signals,

464
00:20:07,556 --> 00:20:11,556
and we honor these signals
and respect these signals,

465
00:20:11,596 --> 00:20:13,836
that we're going to begin to see

466
00:20:13,875 --> 00:20:18,036
the liberating, nourishing,
deeper solutions.

467
00:20:19,115 --> 00:20:23,195
The cows that are waiting all around us.

468
00:20:23,596 --> 00:20:24,756
Thank you.

469
00:20:24,796 --> 00:20:28,476
(Applause)