Our lonely society makes it hard to come home from war | Sebastian Junger

604,482 views ・ 2016-06-10

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:13
I worked as a war reporter for 15 years
0
13759
3353
00:17
before I realized that I really had a problem.
1
17136
3465
00:21
There was something really wrong with me.
2
21101
2106
00:23
This was about a year before 9/11, and America wasn't at war yet.
3
23231
3338
00:27
We weren't talking about PTSD.
4
27432
2392
00:29
We were not yet talking about the effect of trauma and war
5
29848
4196
00:34
on the human psyche.
6
34068
1784
00:36
I'd been in Afghanistan for a couple of months
7
36706
2250
00:38
with the Northern Alliance as they were fighting the Taliban.
8
38980
3008
00:42
And at that point the Taliban had an air force,
9
42012
3257
00:45
they had fighter planes, they had tanks, they had artillery,
10
45293
3229
00:48
and we really got hammered pretty badly a couple of times.
11
48546
3291
00:51
We saw some very ugly things.
12
51861
1966
00:55
But I didn't really think it affected me.
13
55104
1970
00:57
I didn't think much about it.
14
57098
1528
00:58
I came home to New York, where I live.
15
58650
1951
01:01
Then one day I went down into the subway,
16
61141
2365
01:04
and for the first time in my life,
17
64490
2451
01:06
I knew real fear.
18
66965
1834
01:08
I had a massive panic attack.
19
68823
2339
01:12
I was way more scared than I had ever been in Afghanistan.
20
72058
2879
01:16
Everything I was looking at seemed like it was going to kill me,
21
76093
3400
01:19
but I couldn't explain why.
22
79517
2293
01:22
The trains were going too fast.
23
82121
1974
01:24
There were too many people.
24
84119
1354
01:25
The lights were too bright.
25
85497
1788
01:27
Everything was too loud, everything was moving too quickly.
26
87309
2799
01:30
I backed up against a support column and just waited for it.
27
90132
3328
01:35
When I couldn't take it any longer, I ran out of the subway station
28
95115
3196
01:38
and walked wherever I was going.
29
98335
1729
01:41
Later, I found out that what I had was short-term PTSD:
30
101648
4179
01:45
post-traumatic stress disorder.
31
105851
1903
01:48
We evolved as animals, as primates, to survive periods of danger,
32
108993
3228
01:52
and if your life has been in danger,
33
112245
2921
01:55
you want to react to unfamiliar noises.
34
115190
2641
01:59
You want to sleep lightly, wake up easily.
35
119352
2255
02:01
You want to have nightmares and flashbacks
36
121631
2194
02:03
of the thing that could kill you.
37
123849
1809
02:06
You want to be angry because it makes you predisposed to fight,
38
126756
3057
02:09
or depressed, because it keeps you out of circulation a little bit.
39
129837
3373
02:13
Keeps you safe.
40
133591
1331
02:15
It's not very pleasant, but it's better than getting eaten.
41
135580
2878
02:20
Most people recover from that pretty quickly.
42
140469
2454
02:22
It takes a few weeks, a few months.
43
142947
2090
02:25
I kept having panic attacks, but they eventually went away.
44
145061
3115
02:28
I had no idea it was connected to the war that I'd seen.
45
148200
2650
02:30
I just thought I was going crazy,
46
150874
1596
02:32
and then I thought, well, now I'm not going crazy anymore.
47
152494
3134
02:37
About 20 percent of people, however,
48
157197
2630
02:39
wind up with chronic, long-term PTSD.
49
159851
3291
02:43
They are not adapted to temporary danger.
50
163166
2394
02:45
They are maladapted for everyday life,
51
165584
2761
02:48
unless they get help.
52
168369
1178
02:49
We know that the people who are vulnerable to long-term PTSD
53
169994
3539
02:53
are people who were abused as children,
54
173557
2716
02:56
who suffered trauma as children,
55
176297
1731
02:58
people who have low education levels,
56
178052
2618
03:00
people who have psychiatric disorders in their family.
57
180694
2558
03:03
If you served in Vietnam
58
183276
1278
03:04
and your brother is schizophrenic,
59
184578
2694
03:07
you're way more likely to get long-term PTSD from Vietnam.
60
187296
4116
03:12
So I started to study this as a journalist,
61
192571
2628
03:15
and I realized that there was something really strange going on.
62
195868
3523
03:19
The numbers seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
63
199415
2743
03:22
Every war that we have fought as a country,
64
202597
2372
03:24
starting with the Civil War,
65
204993
1974
03:26
the intensity of the combat has gone down.
66
206991
3056
03:30
As a result, the casualty rates have gone down.
67
210878
3380
03:34
But disability rates have gone up.
68
214707
1955
03:36
They should be going in the same direction,
69
216686
2202
03:39
but they're going in different directions.
70
219702
2249
03:44
The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced, thank God,
71
224124
4589
03:48
a casualty rate about one third of what it was in Vietnam.
72
228737
5344
03:56
But they've also created --
73
236129
1960
03:58
they've also produced three times the disability rates.
74
238678
3346
04:03
Around 10 percent of the US military is actively engaged in combat,
75
243526
5973
04:10
10 percent or under.
76
250439
1338
04:11
They're shooting at people, killing people,
77
251801
2274
04:14
getting shot at, seeing their friends get killed.
78
254099
2338
04:16
It's incredibly traumatic.
79
256461
1553
04:18
But it's only about 10 percent of our military.
80
258038
2810
04:20
But about half of our military has filed
81
260872
2233
04:23
for some kind of PTSD compensation from the government.
82
263129
4222
04:28
And suicide doesn't even fit into this in a very logical way.
83
268922
4695
04:34
We've all heard the tragic statistic of 22 vets a day, on average,
84
274173
5786
04:39
in this country, killing themselves.
85
279983
2607
04:43
Most people don't realize
86
283564
1490
04:45
that the majority of those suicides are veterans of the Vietnam War,
87
285078
5637
04:50
that generation,
88
290739
1878
04:52
and their decision to take their own lives actually might not be related
89
292641
4498
04:57
to the war they fought 50 years earlier.
90
297163
2698
05:01
In fact, there's no statistical connection between combat and suicide.
91
301122
3692
05:04
If you're in the military and you're in a lot of combat,
92
304838
3067
05:07
you're no more likely to kill yourself than if you weren't.
93
307929
3010
05:11
In fact, one study found
94
311614
1326
05:12
that if you deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan,
95
312964
2024
05:15
you're actually slightly less likely to commit suicide later.
96
315012
3420
05:20
I studied anthropology in college.
97
320626
2270
05:22
I did my fieldwork on the Navajo reservation.
98
322920
3019
05:25
I wrote a thesis on Navajo long-distance runners.
99
325963
3395
05:30
And recently, while I was researching PTSD,
100
330473
4004
05:35
I had this thought.
101
335501
2105
05:38
I thought back to the work I did when I was young,
102
338325
3079
05:41
and I thought, I bet the Navajo, the Apache, the Comanche --
103
341428
4069
05:45
I mean, these are very warlike nations --
104
345521
2564
05:48
I bet they weren't getting PTSD like we do.
105
348109
3782
05:52
When their warriors came back from fighting the US military
106
352814
2992
05:55
or fighting each other,
107
355830
1608
05:58
I bet they pretty much just slipped right back into tribal life.
108
358241
3943
06:03
And maybe what determines
109
363635
2254
06:05
the rate of long-term PTSD
110
365913
2694
06:08
isn't what happened out there,
111
368631
1988
06:11
but the kind of society you come back to.
112
371942
2405
06:15
And maybe if you come back to a close, cohesive, tribal society,
113
375107
4954
06:20
you can get over trauma pretty quickly.
114
380823
2325
06:23
And if you come back to an alienating, modern society,
115
383830
4346
06:28
you might remain traumatized your entire life.
116
388719
3505
06:32
In other words, maybe the problem isn't them, the vets;
117
392248
3111
06:35
maybe the problem is us.
118
395383
1764
06:39
Certainly, modern society is hard on the human psyche
119
399325
4443
06:44
by every metric that we have.
120
404649
1914
06:49
As wealth goes up in a society,
121
409043
2361
06:53
the suicide rate goes up instead of down.
122
413523
3571
06:58
If you live in modern society,
123
418066
2090
07:00
you're up to eight times more likely
124
420180
2136
07:04
to suffer from depression in your lifetime
125
424379
2321
07:06
than if you live in a poor, agrarian society.
126
426724
2888
07:10
Modern society has probably produced the highest rates of suicide
127
430915
3599
07:14
and depression and anxiety and loneliness and child abuse
128
434538
3254
07:17
ever in human history.
129
437816
1745
07:20
I saw one study
130
440695
1573
07:22
that compared women in Nigeria,
131
442292
3042
07:25
one of the most chaotic and violent and corrupt
132
445358
2497
07:28
and poorest countries in Africa,
133
448627
2206
07:31
to women in North America.
134
451358
1291
07:32
And the highest rates of depression were urban women in North America.
135
452673
5190
07:37
That was also the wealthiest group.
136
457887
1995
07:40
So let's go back to the US military.
137
460637
3849
07:45
Ten percent are in combat.
138
465096
2518
07:47
Around 50 percent have filed for PTSD compensation.
139
467638
4739
07:53
So about 40 percent of veterans really were not traumatized overseas
140
473602
5102
07:59
but have come home to discover they are dangerously alienated
141
479734
4306
08:04
and depressed.
142
484563
1326
08:08
So what is happening with them?
143
488341
2937
08:11
What's going on with those people,
144
491302
1817
08:14
the phantom 40 percent that are troubled but don't understand why?
145
494051
4735
08:18
Maybe it's this:
146
498810
1324
08:20
maybe they had an experience of sort of tribal closeness
147
500158
4644
08:24
in their unit when they were overseas.
148
504826
2230
08:28
They were eating together, sleeping together,
149
508075
2633
08:30
doing tasks and missions together.
150
510732
2299
08:33
They were trusting each other with their lives.
151
513055
2539
08:37
And then they come home
152
517160
1673
08:38
and they have to give all that up
153
518857
2000
08:41
and they're coming back to a society, a modern society,
154
521851
3739
08:45
which is hard on people who weren't even in the military.
155
525614
3533
08:49
It's just hard on everybody.
156
529171
1625
08:51
And we keep focusing on trauma, PTSD.
157
531494
3923
08:56
But for a lot of these people,
158
536685
1692
08:59
maybe it's not trauma.
159
539340
1197
09:00
I mean, certainly, soldiers are traumatized
160
540561
2555
09:03
and the ones who are have to be treated for that.
161
543140
2369
09:05
But a lot of them --
162
545533
1194
09:06
maybe what's bothering them is actually a kind of alienation.
163
546751
3230
09:10
I mean, maybe we just have the wrong word for some of it,
164
550321
2770
09:13
and just changing our language, our understanding,
165
553115
2389
09:15
would help a little bit.
166
555528
1174
09:16
"Post-deployment alienation disorder."
167
556726
2712
09:19
Maybe even just calling it that for some of these people
168
559462
2878
09:23
would allow them to stop imagining
169
563634
2578
09:26
trying to imagine a trauma that didn't really happen
170
566236
2766
09:29
in order to explain a feeling that really is happening.
171
569707
2771
09:32
And in fact, it's an extremely dangerous feeling.
172
572502
2517
09:35
That alienation and depression can lead to suicide.
173
575043
2740
09:37
These people are in danger.
174
577807
1997
09:39
It's very important to understand why.
175
579828
2122
09:43
The Israeli military has a PTSD rate of around one percent.
176
583167
4274
09:47
The theory is that everyone in Israel is supposed to serve in the military.
177
587650
5599
09:53
When soldiers come back from the front line,
178
593273
2110
09:55
they're not going from a military environment to a civilian environment.
179
595407
4438
10:00
They're coming back to a community where everyone understands
180
600741
3707
10:05
about the military.
181
605698
1155
10:06
Everyone's been in it or is going to be in it.
182
606877
2155
10:09
Everyone understands the situation they're all in.
183
609056
2356
10:11
It's as if they're all in one big tribe.
184
611436
2269
10:14
We know that if you take a lab rat
185
614282
2034
10:16
and traumatize it and put it in a cage by itself,
186
616340
3672
10:20
you can maintain its trauma symptoms almost indefinitely.
187
620036
3157
10:23
And if you take that same lab rat and put it in a cage with other rats,
188
623717
5087
10:30
after a couple of weeks, it's pretty much OK.
189
630018
3356
10:35
After 9/11,
190
635509
1262
10:38
the murder rate in New York City went down by 40 percent.
191
638549
3293
10:41
The suicide rate went down.
192
641866
1822
10:44
The violent crime rate in New York went down after 9/11.
193
644756
4504
10:49
Even combat veterans of previous wars who suffered from PTSD
194
649284
5319
10:54
said that their symptoms went down after 9/11 happened.
195
654627
4497
10:59
The reason is that if you traumatize an entire society,
196
659148
3436
11:04
we don't fall apart and turn on one another.
197
664450
3219
11:07
We come together. We unify.
198
667693
2114
11:09
Basically, we tribalize,
199
669831
2047
11:11
and that process of unifying feels so good and is so good for us,
200
671902
5553
11:17
that it even helps people
201
677479
1417
11:18
who are struggling with mental health issues.
202
678920
3294
11:22
During the blitz in London,
203
682238
1765
11:24
admissions to psychiatric wards went down during the bombings.
204
684027
5013
11:30
For a while, that was the kind of country
205
690606
3222
11:33
that American soldiers came back to -- a unified country.
206
693852
3871
11:38
We were sticking together.
207
698288
1271
11:39
We were trying to understand the threat against us.
208
699583
2611
11:42
We were trying to help ourselves and the world.
209
702218
4079
11:47
But that's changed.
210
707521
1601
11:50
Now, American soldiers,
211
710392
2346
11:52
American veterans are coming back to a country that is so bitterly divided
212
712762
3820
11:57
that the two political parties are literally accusing each other
213
717716
3422
12:02
of treason, of being an enemy of the state,
214
722670
2840
12:06
of trying to undermine the security and the welfare of their own country.
215
726265
4760
12:11
The gap between rich and poor is the biggest it's ever been.
216
731049
4133
12:15
It's just getting worse.
217
735206
1185
12:16
Race relations are terrible.
218
736415
2408
12:18
There are demonstrations and even riots in the streets
219
738847
2856
12:21
because of racial injustice.
220
741727
1979
12:24
And veterans know that any tribe that treated itself that way -- in fact,
221
744727
4261
12:29
any platoon that treated itself that way -- would never survive.
222
749012
4930
12:35
We've gotten used to it.
223
755068
1891
12:36
Veterans have gone away and are coming back
224
756983
3853
12:40
and seeing their own country with fresh eyes.
225
760860
4441
12:45
And they see what's going on.
226
765325
1657
12:47
This is the country they fought for.
227
767738
1855
12:50
No wonder they're depressed.
228
770433
1678
12:52
No wonder they're scared.
229
772135
1574
12:55
Sometimes, we ask ourselves if we can save the vets.
230
775371
3877
13:00
I think the real question is if we can save ourselves.
231
780248
3170
13:03
If we can,
232
783905
1690
13:05
I think the vets are going to be fine.
233
785619
1974
13:08
It's time for this country to unite,
234
788697
3137
13:13
if only to help the men and women who fought to protect us.
235
793818
4792
13:19
Thank you very much.
236
799182
1231
13:20
(Applause)
237
800437
6666
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7