WEBVTT

00:00:13.355 --> 00:00:14.916
For a really long time,

00:00:14.955 --> 00:00:18.076
I had two mysteries
that were hanging over me.

00:00:18.675 --> 00:00:20.955
I didn't understand them

00:00:20.955 --> 00:00:23.875
and, to be honest, I was quite afraid
to look into them.

00:00:24.356 --> 00:00:27.876
The first mystery was, I'm 40 years old,

00:00:27.916 --> 00:00:30.996
and all throughout my lifetime,
year after year,

00:00:30.995 --> 00:00:34.356
serious depression and anxiety have risen,

00:00:34.396 --> 00:00:37.076
in the United States, in Britain,

00:00:37.115 --> 00:00:38.875
and across the Western world.

00:00:39.155 --> 00:00:42.115
And I wanted to understand why.

00:00:43.115 --> 00:00:44.956
Why is this happening to us?

00:00:45.396 --> 00:00:48.036
Why is it that with each year that passes,

00:00:48.076 --> 00:00:51.316
more and more of us are finding it harder
to get through the day?

00:00:51.756 --> 00:00:55.316
And I wanted to understand this
because of a more personal mystery.

00:00:55.316 --> 00:00:56.716
When I was a teenager,

00:00:56.716 --> 00:00:58.155
I remember going to my doctor

00:00:58.195 --> 00:01:02.676
and explaining that I had this feeling,
like pain was leaking out of me.

00:01:03.235 --> 00:01:04.635
I couldn't control it,

00:01:04.635 --> 00:01:06.955
I didn't understand why it was happening,

00:01:06.956 --> 00:01:09.036
I felt quite ashamed of it.

00:01:09.036 --> 00:01:10.635
And my doctor told me a story

00:01:10.676 --> 00:01:12.676
that I now realize was well-intentioned,

00:01:12.715 --> 00:01:14.396
but quite oversimplified.

00:01:14.396 --> 00:01:15.596
Not totally wrong.

00:01:15.596 --> 00:01:18.396
My doctor said, "We know
why people get like this.

00:01:18.436 --> 00:01:22.636
Some people just naturally get
a chemical imbalance in their heads --

00:01:22.676 --> 00:01:24.115
you're clearly one of them.

00:01:24.115 --> 00:01:26.115
All we need to do is give you some drugs,

00:01:26.115 --> 00:01:28.475
it will get your chemical
balance back to normal."

00:01:28.516 --> 00:01:30.916
So I started taking a drug
called Paxil or Seroxat,

00:01:30.956 --> 00:01:33.996
it's the same thing with different names
in different countries.

00:01:33.995 --> 00:01:36.475
And I felt much better,
I got a real boost.

00:01:36.516 --> 00:01:37.916
But not very long afterwards,

00:01:37.956 --> 00:01:39.956
this feeling of pain started to come back.

00:01:39.956 --> 00:01:41.796
So I was given higher and higher doses

00:01:41.835 --> 00:01:45.036
until, for 13 years, I was taking
the maximum possible dose

00:01:45.075 --> 00:01:47.075
that you're legally allowed to take.

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,

00:01:50.876 --> 00:01:52.396
I was still in a lot of pain.

00:01:52.396 --> 00:01:55.396
And I started asking myself,
"What's going on here?

00:01:55.396 --> 00:01:56.956
Because you're doing everything

00:01:56.995 --> 00:02:00.115
you're told to do by the story
that's dominating the culture --

00:02:00.156 --> 00:02:02.276
why do you still feel like this?"

00:02:02.275 --> 00:02:05.155
So to get to the bottom
of these two mysteries,

00:02:05.195 --> 00:02:06.596
for a book that I've written

00:02:06.635 --> 00:02:09.115
I ended up going on a big journey
all over the world,

00:02:09.156 --> 00:02:10.556
I traveled over 40,000 miles.

00:02:10.596 --> 00:02:13.075
I wanted to sit with the leading
experts in the world

00:02:13.116 --> 00:02:15.276
about what causes depression and anxiety

00:02:15.316 --> 00:02:17.156
and crucially, what solves them,

00:02:17.195 --> 00:02:19.835
and people who have come through
depression and anxiety

00:02:19.836 --> 00:02:21.956
and out the other side
in all sorts of ways.

00:02:21.955 --> 00:02:23.475
And I learned a huge amount

00:02:23.475 --> 00:02:26.036
from the amazing people
I got to know along the way.

00:02:26.075 --> 00:02:29.036
But I think at the heart
of what I learned is,

00:02:29.075 --> 00:02:32.115
so far, we have scientific evidence

00:02:32.116 --> 00:02:35.836
for nine different causes
of depression and anxiety.

00:02:35.836 --> 00:02:38.676
Two of them are indeed in our biology.

00:02:38.675 --> 00:02:41.355
Your genes can make you
more sensitive to these problems,

00:02:41.395 --> 00:02:43.315
though they don't write your destiny.

00:02:43.355 --> 00:02:46.955
And there are real brain changes
that can happen when you become depressed

00:02:46.996 --> 00:02:48.676
that can make it harder to get out.

00:02:48.716 --> 00:02:50.876
But most of the factors
that have been proven

00:02:50.915 --> 00:02:52.756
to cause depression and anxiety

00:02:52.795 --> 00:02:54.555
are not in our biology.

00:02:55.515 --> 00:02:57.715
They are factors in the way we live.

00:02:58.116 --> 00:02:59.596
And once you understand them,

00:02:59.635 --> 00:03:02.716
it opens up a very different
set of solutions

00:03:02.756 --> 00:03:04.276
that should be offered to people

00:03:04.316 --> 00:03:07.276
alongside the option
of chemical antidepressants.

00:03:07.276 --> 00:03:09.076
For example,

00:03:09.116 --> 00:03:12.556
if you're lonely, you're more likely
to become depressed.

00:03:12.556 --> 00:03:15.676
If, when you go to work,
you don't have any control over your job,

00:03:15.716 --> 00:03:17.596
you've just got to do what you're told,

00:03:17.635 --> 00:03:19.515
you're more likely to become depressed.

00:03:19.556 --> 00:03:22.036
If you very rarely get out
into the natural world,

00:03:22.036 --> 00:03:23.915
you're more likely to become depressed.

00:03:23.955 --> 00:03:27.036
And one thing unites a lot of the causes
of depression and anxiety

00:03:27.075 --> 00:03:28.235
that I learned about.

00:03:28.276 --> 00:03:30.316
Not all of them, but a lot of them.

00:03:30.355 --> 00:03:32.036
Everyone here knows

00:03:32.036 --> 00:03:34.716
you've all got natural
physical needs, right?

00:03:34.716 --> 00:03:35.915
Obviously.

00:03:35.915 --> 00:03:38.515
You need food, you need water,

00:03:38.515 --> 00:03:40.756
you need shelter, you need clean air.

00:03:40.795 --> 00:03:42.596
If I took those things away from you,

00:03:42.596 --> 00:03:44.915
you'd all be in real trouble, real fast.

00:03:44.915 --> 00:03:46.716
But at the same time,

00:03:46.756 --> 00:03:50.116
every human being
has natural psychological needs.

00:03:50.156 --> 00:03:52.195
You need to feel you belong.

00:03:52.195 --> 00:03:55.276
You need to feel your life
has meaning and purpose.

00:03:55.276 --> 00:03:57.836
You need to feel that people
see you and value you.

00:03:57.836 --> 00:04:00.396
You need to feel you've got
a future that makes sense.

00:04:00.436 --> 00:04:03.475
And this culture we built
is good at lots of things.

00:04:03.515 --> 00:04:05.675
And many things are better
than in the past --

00:04:05.675 --> 00:04:06.995
I'm glad to be alive today.

00:04:07.036 --> 00:04:08.996
But we've been getting less and less good

00:04:09.036 --> 00:04:13.116
at meeting these deep,
underlying psychological needs.

00:04:13.876 --> 00:04:15.996
And it's not the only thing
that's going on,

00:04:16.036 --> 00:04:20.076
but I think it's the key reason
why this crisis keeps rising and rising.

00:04:20.915 --> 00:04:24.156
And I found this really hard to absorb.

00:04:24.156 --> 00:04:26.876
I really wrestled with the idea

00:04:26.915 --> 00:04:31.315
of shifting from thinking of my depression
as just a problem in my brain,

00:04:31.315 --> 00:04:32.515
to one with many causes,

00:04:32.516 --> 00:04:34.596
including many in the way we're living.

00:04:34.596 --> 00:04:36.956
And it only really began
to fall into place for me

00:04:36.995 --> 00:04:40.156
when one day, I went to interview
a South African psychiatrist

00:04:40.156 --> 00:04:41.956
named Dr. Derek Summerfield.

00:04:41.995 --> 00:04:43.156
He's a great guy.

00:04:43.156 --> 00:04:46.876
And Dr. Summerfield
happened to be in Cambodia in 2001,

00:04:46.915 --> 00:04:50.195
when they first introduced
chemical antidepressants

00:04:50.235 --> 00:04:51.956
for people in that country.

00:04:51.956 --> 00:04:55.276
And the local doctors, the Cambodians,
had never heard of these drugs,

00:04:55.276 --> 00:04:56.876
so they were like, what are they?

00:04:56.915 --> 00:04:58.115
And he explained.

00:04:58.156 --> 00:04:59.675
And they said to him,

00:04:59.716 --> 00:05:02.396
"We don't need them,
we've already got antidepressants."

00:05:02.435 --> 00:05:04.156
And he was like, "What do you mean?"

00:05:04.196 --> 00:05:07.436
He thought they were going to talk about
some kind of herbal remedy,

00:05:07.435 --> 00:05:11.235
like St. John's Wort, ginkgo biloba,
something like that.

00:05:11.915 --> 00:05:14.276
Instead, they told him a story.

00:05:14.795 --> 00:05:18.355
There was a farmer in their community
who worked in the rice fields.

00:05:18.396 --> 00:05:20.156
And one day, he stood on a land mine

00:05:20.196 --> 00:05:22.396
left over from the war
with the United States,

00:05:22.396 --> 00:05:23.836
and he got his leg blown off.

00:05:23.836 --> 00:05:25.276
So they him an artificial leg,

00:05:25.315 --> 00:05:28.075
and after a while, he went back
to work in the rice fields.

00:05:28.115 --> 00:05:30.635
But apparently, it's super painful
to work under water

00:05:30.636 --> 00:05:32.316
when you've got an artificial limb,

00:05:32.355 --> 00:05:34.276
and I'm guessing it was pretty traumatic

00:05:34.315 --> 00:05:36.875
to go back and work in the field
where he got blown up.

00:05:36.915 --> 00:05:39.315
The guy started to cry all day,

00:05:39.315 --> 00:05:40.755
he refused to get out of bed,

00:05:40.795 --> 00:05:43.675
he developed all the symptoms
of classic depression.

00:05:43.995 --> 00:05:45.355
The Cambodian doctor said,

00:05:45.396 --> 00:05:47.675
"This is when we gave him
an antidepressant."

00:05:47.716 --> 00:05:50.355
And Dr. Summerfield said,
"What was it?"

00:05:50.355 --> 00:05:53.195
They explained that they went
and sat with him.

00:05:53.995 --> 00:05:55.395
They listened to him.

00:05:56.475 --> 00:05:58.995
They realized that his pain made sense --

00:05:59.036 --> 00:06:01.956
it was hard for him to see it
in the throes of his depression,

00:06:01.995 --> 00:06:05.635
but actually, it had perfectly
understandable causes in his life.

00:06:05.956 --> 00:06:09.156
One of the doctors, talking to the people
in the community, figured,

00:06:09.196 --> 00:06:11.116
"You know, if we bought this guy a cow,

00:06:11.156 --> 00:06:13.156
he could become a dairy farmer,

00:06:13.156 --> 00:06:16.276
he wouldn't be in this position
that was screwing him up so much,

00:06:16.276 --> 00:06:18.795
he wouldn't have to go
and work in the rice fields."

00:06:18.836 --> 00:06:20.036
So they bought him a cow.

00:06:20.036 --> 00:06:22.235
Within a couple of weeks,
his crying stopped,

00:06:22.235 --> 00:06:24.156
within a month, his depression was gone.

00:06:24.196 --> 00:06:25.756
They said to doctor Summerfield,

00:06:25.795 --> 00:06:28.555
"So you see, doctor, that cow,
that was an antidepressant,

00:06:28.596 --> 00:06:30.036
that's what you mean, right?"

00:06:30.076 --> 00:06:31.236
(Laughter)

00:06:31.235 --> 00:06:34.315
(Applause)

00:06:34.315 --> 00:06:37.195
If you'd been raised to think
about depression the way I was,

00:06:37.235 --> 00:06:38.836
and most of the people here were,

00:06:38.836 --> 00:06:40.516
that sounds like a bad joke, right?

00:06:40.555 --> 00:06:42.596
"I went to my doctor
for an antidepressant,

00:06:42.596 --> 00:06:43.756
she gave me a cow."

00:06:43.795 --> 00:06:46.836
But what those Cambodian
doctors knew intuitively,

00:06:46.836 --> 00:06:49.836
based on this individual,
unscientific anecdote,

00:06:49.836 --> 00:06:53.115
is what the leading
medical body in the world,

00:06:53.156 --> 00:06:55.235
the World Health Organization,

00:06:55.276 --> 00:06:57.436
has been trying to tell us for years,

00:06:57.475 --> 00:06:59.956
based on the best scientific evidence.

00:07:00.555 --> 00:07:02.515
If you're depressed,

00:07:02.516 --> 00:07:03.915
if you're anxious,

00:07:04.995 --> 00:07:08.275
you're not weak, you're not crazy,

00:07:08.276 --> 00:07:11.876
you're not, in the main,
a machine with broken parts.

00:07:12.956 --> 00:07:15.475
You're a human being with unmet needs.

00:07:15.915 --> 00:07:19.435
And it's just as important to think here
about what those Cambodian doctors

00:07:19.475 --> 00:07:21.795
and the World Health Organization
are not saying.

00:07:21.836 --> 00:07:23.355
They did not say to this farmer,

00:07:23.396 --> 00:07:26.196
"Hey, buddy, you need
to pull yourself together.

00:07:26.196 --> 00:07:29.475
It's your job to figure out
and fix this problem on your own."

00:07:29.836 --> 00:07:31.836
On the contrary, what they said is,

00:07:31.875 --> 00:07:35.395
"We're here as a group
to pull together with you,

00:07:35.396 --> 00:07:39.836
so together, we can figure out
and fix this problem."

00:07:40.555 --> 00:07:44.555
This is what every depressed person needs,

00:07:44.596 --> 00:07:47.836
and it's what every
depressed person deserves.

00:07:47.836 --> 00:07:50.836
This is why one of the leading
doctors at the United Nations,

00:07:50.875 --> 00:07:53.195
in their official statement
for World Health Day,

00:07:53.196 --> 00:07:54.676
couple of years back in 2017,

00:07:54.716 --> 00:07:57.516
said we need to talk less
about chemical imbalances

00:07:57.555 --> 00:08:00.596
and more about the imbalances
in the way we live.

00:08:00.915 --> 00:08:02.875
Drugs give real relief to some people --

00:08:02.915 --> 00:08:05.036
they gave relief to me for a while --

00:08:05.076 --> 00:08:09.475
but precisely because this problem
goes deeper than their biology,

00:08:09.516 --> 00:08:12.556
the solutions need to go much deeper, too.

00:08:12.596 --> 00:08:15.196
But when I first learned that,

00:08:15.196 --> 00:08:16.876
I remember thinking,

00:08:16.915 --> 00:08:19.036
"OK, I could see
all the scientific evidence,

00:08:19.076 --> 00:08:20.636
I read a huge number of studies,

00:08:20.675 --> 00:08:23.955
I interviewed a huge number of the experts
who were explaining this,"

00:08:23.995 --> 00:08:26.395
but I kept thinking, "How can we
possibly do that?"

00:08:26.396 --> 00:08:28.316
The things that are making us depressed

00:08:28.355 --> 00:08:30.836
are in most cases more complex
than what was going on

00:08:30.836 --> 00:08:32.156
with this Cambodian farmer.

00:08:32.155 --> 00:08:34.795
Where do we even begin with that insight?

00:08:34.836 --> 00:08:38.076
But then, in the long journey for my book,

00:08:38.115 --> 00:08:39.675
all over the world,

00:08:39.716 --> 00:08:42.275
I kept meeting people
who were doing exactly that,

00:08:42.316 --> 00:08:44.756
from Sydney, to San Francisco,

00:08:44.796 --> 00:08:45.956
to São Paulo.

00:08:45.995 --> 00:08:48.076
I kept meeting people
who were understanding

00:08:48.076 --> 00:08:50.436
the deeper causes
of depression and anxiety

00:08:50.436 --> 00:08:52.876
and, as groups, fixing them.

00:08:52.875 --> 00:08:55.555
Obviously, I can't tell you
about all the amazing people

00:08:55.596 --> 00:08:57.076
I got to know and wrote about,

00:08:57.115 --> 00:09:00.556
or all of the nine causes of depression
and anxiety that I learned about,

00:09:00.556 --> 00:09:03.036
because they won't let me give
a 10-hour TED Talk --

00:09:03.076 --> 00:09:04.836
you can complain about that to them.

00:09:04.836 --> 00:09:06.796
But I want to focus on two of the causes

00:09:06.796 --> 00:09:10.236
and two of the solutions
that emerge from them, if that's alright.

00:09:10.556 --> 00:09:11.716
Here's the first.

00:09:12.275 --> 00:09:15.275
We are the loneliest society
in human history.

00:09:15.316 --> 00:09:18.156
There was a recent study
that asked Americans,

00:09:18.155 --> 00:09:21.315
"Do you feel like you're no longer
close to anyone?"

00:09:21.355 --> 00:09:24.995
And 39 percent of people
said that described them.

00:09:25.035 --> 00:09:26.395
"No longer close to anyone."

00:09:26.395 --> 00:09:28.915
In the international
measurements of loneliness,

00:09:28.916 --> 00:09:31.475
Britain and the rest of Europe
are just behind the US,

00:09:31.515 --> 00:09:33.275
in case anyone here is feeling smug.

00:09:33.316 --> 00:09:34.316
(Laughter)

00:09:34.355 --> 00:09:36.235
I spent a lot of time discussing this

00:09:36.275 --> 00:09:38.675
with the leading expert
in the world on loneliness,

00:09:38.676 --> 00:09:40.956
an incredible man
named professor John Cacioppo,

00:09:40.956 --> 00:09:42.115
who was at Chicago,

00:09:42.155 --> 00:09:44.955
and I thought a lot about one question
his work poses to us.

00:09:44.995 --> 00:09:47.275
Professor Cacioppo asked,

00:09:47.316 --> 00:09:48.956
"Why do we exist?

00:09:48.995 --> 00:09:50.956
Why are we here, why are we alive?"

00:09:50.956 --> 00:09:53.156
One key reason

00:09:53.196 --> 00:09:55.995
is that our ancestors
on the savannas of Africa

00:09:56.035 --> 00:09:57.755
were really good at one thing.

00:09:58.275 --> 00:10:01.555
They weren't bigger than the animals
they took down a lot of the time,

00:10:01.596 --> 00:10:04.916
they weren't faster than the animals
they took down a lot of the time,

00:10:04.916 --> 00:10:07.636
but they were much better
at banding together into groups

00:10:07.676 --> 00:10:09.276
and cooperating.

00:10:09.275 --> 00:10:11.555
This was our superpower as a species --

00:10:11.596 --> 00:10:12.995
we band together,

00:10:12.995 --> 00:10:15.475
just like bees evolved to live in a hive,

00:10:15.515 --> 00:10:17.755
humans evolved to live in a tribe.

00:10:17.755 --> 00:10:21.596
And we are the first humans ever

00:10:22.475 --> 00:10:23.956
to disband our tribes.

00:10:24.475 --> 00:10:26.556
And it is making us feel awful.

00:10:27.035 --> 00:10:29.195
But it doesn't have to be this way.

00:10:29.196 --> 00:10:31.836
One of the heroes in my book,
and in fact, in my life,

00:10:31.875 --> 00:10:33.956
is a doctor named Sam Everington.

00:10:33.995 --> 00:10:36.716
He's a general practitioner
in a poor part of East London,

00:10:36.755 --> 00:10:38.315
where I lived for many years.

00:10:38.355 --> 00:10:40.035
And Sam was really uncomfortable,

00:10:40.076 --> 00:10:41.635
because he had loads of patients

00:10:41.635 --> 00:10:44.076
coming to him with terrible
depression and anxiety.

00:10:44.115 --> 00:10:46.836
And like me, he's not opposed
to chemical antidepressants,

00:10:46.875 --> 00:10:49.076
he thinks they give
some relief to some people.

00:10:49.115 --> 00:10:50.475
But he could see two things.

00:10:50.515 --> 00:10:54.075
Firstly, his patients were depressed
and anxious a lot of the time

00:10:54.076 --> 00:10:57.836
for totally understandable
reasons, like loneliness.

00:10:57.836 --> 00:11:01.276
And secondly, although the drugs
were giving some relief to some people,

00:11:01.316 --> 00:11:03.596
for many people,
they didn't solve the problem.

00:11:03.596 --> 00:11:05.155
The underlying problem.

00:11:05.875 --> 00:11:08.515
One day, Sam decided
to pioneer a different approach.

00:11:08.556 --> 00:11:10.996
A woman came to his center,
his medical center,

00:11:11.035 --> 00:11:12.475
called Lisa Cunningham.

00:11:12.515 --> 00:11:14.395
I got to know Lisa later.

00:11:14.395 --> 00:11:18.475
And Lisa had been shut away in her home
with crippling depression and anxiety

00:11:18.515 --> 00:11:19.675
for seven years.

00:11:20.875 --> 00:11:23.836
And when she came to Sam's center,
she was told, "Don't worry,

00:11:23.836 --> 00:11:25.676
we'll carry on giving you these drugs,

00:11:25.716 --> 00:11:28.475
but we're also going to prescribe
something else.

00:11:28.515 --> 00:11:31.956
We're going to prescribe for you
to come here to this center twice a week

00:11:31.995 --> 00:11:34.755
to meet with a group of other
depressed and anxious people,

00:11:34.796 --> 00:11:37.596
not to talk about how miserable you are,

00:11:37.635 --> 00:11:41.155
but to figure out something
meaningful you can all do together

00:11:41.196 --> 00:11:44.276
so you won't be lonely and you won't feel
like life is pointless."

00:11:44.316 --> 00:11:47.076
The first time this group met,

00:11:47.115 --> 00:11:49.355
Lisa literally started
vomiting with anxiety,

00:11:49.395 --> 00:11:51.315
it was so overwhelming for her.

00:11:51.355 --> 00:11:53.995
But people rubbed her back,
the group started talking,

00:11:53.995 --> 00:11:55.675
they were like, "What could we do?"

00:11:55.716 --> 00:11:57.995
These are inner-city,
East London people like me,

00:11:58.035 --> 00:12:00.075
they didn't know anything about gardening.

00:12:00.076 --> 00:12:02.316
They were like, "Why don't we
learn gardening?"

00:12:02.355 --> 00:12:04.515
There was an area
behind the doctors' offices

00:12:04.556 --> 00:12:05.716
that was just scrubland.

00:12:05.716 --> 00:12:07.596
"Why don't we make this into a garden?"

00:12:07.635 --> 00:12:09.795
They started to take books
out of the library,

00:12:09.836 --> 00:12:11.316
started to watch YouTube clips.

00:12:11.355 --> 00:12:13.515
They started to get
their fingers in the soil.

00:12:13.836 --> 00:12:16.875
They started to learn
the rhythms of the seasons.

00:12:16.916 --> 00:12:18.236
There's a lot of evidence

00:12:18.275 --> 00:12:19.875
that exposure to the natural world

00:12:19.916 --> 00:12:21.876
is a really powerful antidepressant.

00:12:21.916 --> 00:12:24.916
But they started to do something
even more important.

00:12:25.355 --> 00:12:27.355
They started to form a tribe.

00:12:27.395 --> 00:12:29.195
They started to form a group.

00:12:29.235 --> 00:12:31.275
They started to care about each other.

00:12:31.275 --> 00:12:32.955
If one of them didn't show up,

00:12:32.995 --> 00:12:35.515
the others would go
looking for them -- "Are you OK?"

00:12:35.515 --> 00:12:38.115
Help them figure out
what was troubling them that day.

00:12:38.155 --> 00:12:39.955
The way Lisa put it to me,

00:12:39.995 --> 00:12:42.596
"As the garden began to bloom,

00:12:42.596 --> 00:12:43.875
we began to bloom."

00:12:44.475 --> 00:12:46.515
This approach is called
social prescribing,

00:12:46.515 --> 00:12:48.035
it's spreading all over Europe.

00:12:48.076 --> 00:12:50.355
And there's a small,
but growing body of evidence

00:12:50.395 --> 00:12:53.275
suggesting it can produce real
and meaningful falls

00:12:53.275 --> 00:12:55.275
in depression and anxiety.

00:12:55.316 --> 00:12:59.036
And one day, I remember
standing in the garden

00:12:59.035 --> 00:13:01.515
that Lisa and her once-depressed
friends had built --

00:13:01.556 --> 00:13:03.115
it's a really beautiful garden --

00:13:03.155 --> 00:13:04.355
and having this thought,

00:13:04.355 --> 00:13:08.235
it's very much inspired by a guy
called professor Hugh Mackay in Australia.

00:13:08.275 --> 00:13:12.635
I was thinking, so often
when people feel down in this culture,

00:13:12.676 --> 00:13:15.716
what we say to them -- I'm sure
everyone here said it, I have --

00:13:15.755 --> 00:13:18.995
we say, "You just need
to be you, be yourself."

00:13:19.755 --> 00:13:22.675
And I've realized, actually,
what we should say to people is,

00:13:22.716 --> 00:13:23.875
"Don't be you.

00:13:24.316 --> 00:13:25.636
Don't be yourself.

00:13:26.196 --> 00:13:28.436
Be us, be we.

00:13:28.755 --> 00:13:30.076
Be part of a group."

00:13:30.115 --> 00:13:33.836
(Applause)

00:13:33.836 --> 00:13:36.436
The solution to these problems

00:13:36.436 --> 00:13:39.596
does not lie in drawing
more and more on your resources

00:13:39.635 --> 00:13:41.076
as an isolated individual --

00:13:41.076 --> 00:13:43.115
that's partly what got us in this crisis.

00:13:43.155 --> 00:13:45.915
It lies on reconnecting
with something bigger than you.

00:13:45.916 --> 00:13:48.356
And that really connects
to one of the other causes

00:13:48.355 --> 00:13:51.275
of depression and anxiety
that I wanted to talk to you about.

00:13:51.275 --> 00:13:52.995
So everyone knows

00:13:52.995 --> 00:13:56.755
junk food has taken over our diets
and made us physically sick.

00:13:56.755 --> 00:13:58.995
I don't say that
with any sense of superiority,

00:13:58.995 --> 00:14:01.395
I literally came to give
this talk from McDonald's.

00:14:01.436 --> 00:14:04.956
I saw all of you eating that
healthy TED breakfast, I was like no way.

00:14:04.956 --> 00:14:10.115
But just like junk food has taken over
our diets and made us physically sick,

00:14:10.115 --> 00:14:14.235
a kind of junk values
have taken over our minds

00:14:14.275 --> 00:14:15.755
and made us mentally sick.

00:14:16.155 --> 00:14:19.275
For thousands of years,
philosophers have said,

00:14:19.275 --> 00:14:23.875
if you think life is about money,
and status and showing off,

00:14:23.875 --> 00:14:25.435
you're going to feel like crap.

00:14:25.436 --> 00:14:27.516
That's not an exact quote
from Schopenhauer,

00:14:27.515 --> 00:14:29.315
but that is the gist of what he said.

00:14:29.316 --> 00:14:32.355
But weirdly, hardy anyone
had scientifically investigated this,

00:14:32.395 --> 00:14:36.035
until a truly extraordinary person
I got to know, named professor Tim Kasser,

00:14:36.035 --> 00:14:38.355
who's at Knox College in Illinois,

00:14:38.355 --> 00:14:40.915
and he's been researching this
for about 30 years now.

00:14:40.956 --> 00:14:43.956
And his research suggests
several really important things.

00:14:43.995 --> 00:14:47.196
Firstly, the more you believe

00:14:47.196 --> 00:14:51.556
you can buy and display
your way out of sadness,

00:14:51.596 --> 00:14:53.796
and into a good life,

00:14:53.796 --> 00:14:56.716
the more likely you are to become
depressed and anxious.

00:14:56.755 --> 00:14:58.035
And secondly,

00:14:58.076 --> 00:15:02.635
as a society, we have become
much more driven by these beliefs.

00:15:02.676 --> 00:15:04.076
All throughout my lifetime,

00:15:04.115 --> 00:15:08.316
under the weight of advertising
and Instagram and everything like them.

00:15:08.875 --> 00:15:10.235
And as I thought about this,

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.

00:15:16.035 --> 00:15:19.915
We've been trained to look for happiness
in all the wrong places,

00:15:19.956 --> 00:15:22.716
and just like junk food
doesn't meet your nutritional needs

00:15:22.755 --> 00:15:25.035
and actually makes you feel terrible,

00:15:25.076 --> 00:15:28.196
junk values don't meet
your psychological needs,

00:15:28.235 --> 00:15:30.875
and they take you away from a good life.

00:15:30.875 --> 00:15:33.515
But when I first spent time
with professor Kasser

00:15:33.556 --> 00:15:35.036
and I was learning all this,

00:15:35.035 --> 00:15:37.635
I felt a really weird mixture of emotions.

00:15:37.635 --> 00:15:40.355
Because on the one hand,
I found this really challenging.

00:15:40.355 --> 00:15:43.635
I could see how often
in my own life, when I felt down,

00:15:43.635 --> 00:15:48.915
I tried to remedy it with some kind of
show-offy, grand external solution.

00:15:49.436 --> 00:15:52.115
And I could see why that
did not work well for me.

00:15:52.916 --> 00:15:55.796
I also thought,
isn't this kind of obvious?

00:15:55.836 --> 00:15:57.596
Isn't this almost like banal, right?

00:15:57.596 --> 00:15:58.916
If I said to everyone here,

00:15:58.956 --> 00:16:01.076
none of you are going to lie
on your deathbed

00:16:01.115 --> 00:16:04.436
and think about all the shoes you bought
and all the retweets you got,

00:16:04.475 --> 00:16:06.155
you're going to think about moments

00:16:06.155 --> 00:16:08.275
of love, meaning
and connection in your life.

00:16:08.316 --> 00:16:10.235
I think that seems almost like a cliché.

00:16:10.275 --> 00:16:12.635
But I kept talking
to professor Kasser and saying,

00:16:12.635 --> 00:16:14.995
"Why am I feeling
this strange doubleness?"

00:16:15.035 --> 00:16:18.835
And he said, "At some level,
we all know these things.

00:16:18.836 --> 00:16:21.235
But in this culture,
we don't live by them."

00:16:21.235 --> 00:16:23.316
We know them so well
they've become clichés,

00:16:23.355 --> 00:16:24.635
but we don't live by them.

00:16:24.635 --> 00:16:27.875
I kept asking why, why would we know
something so profound,

00:16:27.875 --> 00:16:29.155
but not live by it?

00:16:29.196 --> 00:16:32.596
And after a while,
professor Kasser said to me,

00:16:32.635 --> 00:16:35.035
"Because we live in a machine

00:16:35.076 --> 00:16:38.796
that is designed to get us to neglect
what is important about life."

00:16:39.275 --> 00:16:40.835
I had to really think about that.

00:16:40.875 --> 00:16:42.275
"Because we live in a machine

00:16:42.316 --> 00:16:45.956
that is designed to get us
to neglect what is important about life."

00:16:46.275 --> 00:16:50.075
And professor Kasser wanted to figure out
if we can disrupt that machine.

00:16:50.115 --> 00:16:51.956
He's done loads of research into this;

00:16:51.995 --> 00:16:53.555
I'll tell you about one example,

00:16:53.556 --> 00:16:57.076
and I really urge everyone here
to try this with their friends and family.

00:16:57.115 --> 00:17:00.436
With a guy called Nathan Dungan,
he got a group of teenagers and adults

00:17:00.475 --> 00:17:04.675
to come together for a series of sessions
over a period of time, to meet up.

00:17:04.715 --> 00:17:06.475
And part of the point of the group

00:17:06.476 --> 00:17:09.796
was to get people to think
about a moment in their life

00:17:09.796 --> 00:17:12.556
they had actually found
meaning and purpose.

00:17:12.596 --> 00:17:14.715
For different people,
it was different things.

00:17:14.756 --> 00:17:18.355
For some people, it was playing music,
writing, helping someone --

00:17:18.395 --> 00:17:21.195
I'm sure everyone here
can picture something, right?

00:17:21.236 --> 00:17:24.116
And part of the point of the group
was to get people to ask,

00:17:24.115 --> 00:17:26.875
"OK, how could you dedicate
more of your life

00:17:26.915 --> 00:17:29.596
to pursuing these moments
of meaning and purpose,

00:17:29.596 --> 00:17:32.556
and less to, I don't know,
buying crap you don't need,

00:17:32.596 --> 00:17:35.316
putting it on social media
and trying to get people to go,

00:17:35.316 --> 00:17:36.596
'OMG, so jealous!'"

00:17:36.955 --> 00:17:38.596
And what they found was,

00:17:38.635 --> 00:17:39.955
just having these meetings,

00:17:39.996 --> 00:17:43.076
it was like a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous
for consumerism, right?

00:17:43.796 --> 00:17:46.756
Getting people to have these meetings,
articulate these values,

00:17:46.796 --> 00:17:49.316
determine to act on them
and check in with each other,

00:17:49.316 --> 00:17:52.196
led to a marked shift in people's values.

00:17:52.236 --> 00:17:56.636
It took them away from this hurricane
of depression-generating messages

00:17:56.635 --> 00:17:59.276
training us to seek happiness
in the wrong places,

00:17:59.316 --> 00:18:02.635
and towards more meaningful
and nourishing values

00:18:02.675 --> 00:18:04.675
that lift us out of depression.

00:18:05.355 --> 00:18:08.635
But with all the solutions that I saw
and have written about,

00:18:08.675 --> 00:18:11.395
and many I can't talk about here,

00:18:11.435 --> 00:18:12.795
I kept thinking,

00:18:12.836 --> 00:18:16.516
you know: Why did it take me so long
to see these insights?

00:18:16.556 --> 00:18:18.556
Because when you explain them to people --

00:18:18.596 --> 00:18:21.036
some of them are more
complicated, but not all --

00:18:21.076 --> 00:18:24.316
when you explain this to people,
it's not like rocket science, right?

00:18:24.316 --> 00:18:26.435
At some level, we already
know these things.

00:18:26.435 --> 00:18:29.076
Why do we find it so hard to understand?

00:18:29.115 --> 00:18:31.036
I think there's many reasons.

00:18:31.476 --> 00:18:35.756
But I think one reason is
that we have to change our understanding

00:18:35.756 --> 00:18:39.196
of what depression
and anxiety actually are.

00:18:39.756 --> 00:18:41.956
There are very real
biological contributions

00:18:41.996 --> 00:18:43.716
to depression and anxiety.

00:18:44.115 --> 00:18:47.875
But if we allow the biology
to become the whole picture,

00:18:47.875 --> 00:18:49.155
as I did for so long,

00:18:49.155 --> 00:18:53.235
as I would argue our culture
has done pretty much most of my life,

00:18:53.236 --> 00:18:57.116
what we're implicitly saying to people
is, and this isn't anyone's intention,

00:18:57.115 --> 00:19:00.155
but what we're implicitly
saying to people is,

00:19:00.195 --> 00:19:02.475
"Your pain doesn't mean anything.

00:19:02.516 --> 00:19:03.956
It's just a malfunction.

00:19:03.996 --> 00:19:06.436
It's like a glitch in a computer program,

00:19:06.476 --> 00:19:09.156
it's just a wiring problem in your head."

00:19:10.076 --> 00:19:13.155
But I was only able to start
changing my life

00:19:13.195 --> 00:19:17.235
when I realized your depression
is not a malfunction.

00:19:18.596 --> 00:19:19.756
It's a signal.

00:19:20.675 --> 00:19:22.675
Your depression is a signal.

00:19:23.076 --> 00:19:24.915
It's telling you something.

00:19:24.955 --> 00:19:29.555
(Applause)

00:19:29.556 --> 00:19:31.956
We feel this way for reasons,

00:19:31.996 --> 00:19:34.716
and they can be hard to see
in the throes of depression --

00:19:34.715 --> 00:19:37.315
I understand that really well
from personal experience.

00:19:37.355 --> 00:19:40.836
But with the right help,
we can understand these problems

00:19:40.875 --> 00:19:43.355
and we can fix these problems together.

00:19:43.355 --> 00:19:44.556
But to do that,

00:19:44.596 --> 00:19:46.316
the very first step

00:19:46.355 --> 00:19:48.955
is we have to stop insulting these signals

00:19:48.996 --> 00:19:53.196
by saying they're a sign of weakness,
or madness or purely biological,

00:19:53.195 --> 00:19:55.115
except for a tiny number of people.

00:19:55.155 --> 00:19:58.796
We need to start
listening to these signals,

00:19:58.796 --> 00:20:02.076
because they're telling us
something we really need to hear.

00:20:02.516 --> 00:20:07.516
It's only when we truly
listen to these signals,

00:20:07.556 --> 00:20:11.556
and we honor these signals
and respect these signals,

00:20:11.596 --> 00:20:13.836
that we're going to begin to see

00:20:13.875 --> 00:20:18.036
the liberating, nourishing,
deeper solutions.

00:20:19.115 --> 00:20:23.195
The cows that are waiting all around us.

00:20:23.596 --> 00:20:24.756
Thank you.

00:20:24.796 --> 00:20:28.476
(Applause)
