Day 7: The Gaza Training Ends
“We have been on a journey,” says the psychologist who is leading the final session of Mohammed’s group. She sits comfortably cross-legged on the floor, in her long coat and headscarf, next to the young man who is her partner on this last day. “We have come to know each other in a way that is not usual here in Gaza,” she goes on. “men and women speaking together from their hearts, all of us finding new friends.”
This is our last group and, as we check-in, and while my translator summons up her English, I find myself pondering old mysteries and contemplating new wonders. The dress of the woman’s co-leader: He is wearing a sport jacket and slacks, neatly pressed, and a tie, secured with a Windsor knot, a professional code of dress that many of the men favor. How much effort, I wonder, does it take to maintain such self-respect amid Gaza’s crushing, demoralizing constraints? And how does he do it with the dearth of dry cleaning facilities and the scarcity of solvents? I am impressed once again by the intelligence, dignity and, yes, elegance of a woman who, except for a tiny slit for her eyes is completely covered. Her assessment of herself this last day is so open, unsparing, witty – “I want to thank all of you,” she begins, “I realize now I have been too rigid, and often wrong, in my judgments; and I have been unnecessarily covering my feelings, not just my body.” I too realize once again – what a grace of these groups – that I have much to learn about my own preconceptions and judgments.
In this session we do drawings similar to the ones we do on the first day of the first training, pictures that often show us how much – sometimes how stunningly, satisfyingly much – we have changed since that opening group. The wires of a cage that contained an irritable, frustrated physician have turned into steps on a ladder which will bring him to a place of peace, among trees in his yard and within himself; a psychologist’s family members scattered across the landscape by misunderstanding in day one’s picture are now gathered in a comforting circle in which they are, like members of the mind-body group she is addressing, “sharing their feelings.”
Our leader has brought us candies wrapped in red foil, to celebrate our time together, and to mark its end. “I Love You” is written across them in silver. Another woman has brought us all pens “to remember this group when you write.” A third has baked a cheesecake, its top speckled with many colored candied glitter, with a single candle. “This is,” she announces, “to celebrate our journey and also,” she adds, “the Prophet Mohammed’s hijra,” his journey from Mecca to Medina in 622, “whose anniversary falls on this day.”
It was in Medina, I remember, that Mohammed created the umma, the spiritual community that is the model for Islamic society. It provides Muslims with the opportunity to gratefully practice the prayers and manifest the precepts and the code of conduct that Mohammed brought to them.
As our leader carefully divides the cake in squares I hear, as clearly as if he were once again standing in front of me, the closing comment of a young psychologist in our previous training nine months before. A tough, pale, earnest, bearded young man, he had spoken with some formality: “I did not know what to expect when I came; these techniques, it seemed to me, were foreign to Gaza. But as I have been here these days I have been so impressed. You and your faculty are so knowledgeable and such good teachers, and I have learned so much about myself as well as psychology. But even more important” – I can hear again his voice lowering, more intimate now – “you have all been so kind to me and all the participants, have made us feel so much at ease. I believe,” – I knew he was getting ready to conclude, but never could have imagined what he would say – “that this is what it must have been like in the time of the Prophet Mohammed.”
Our leader hands us plates, and we eat our cake and savor each other’s company. There is general sadness at “concluding this blessed vacation with ourselves,” as one woman observes, to general agreement. But there are also commitments to “meditate daily” and “shake and dance with my children when we are feeling overwhelmed, or stressed.” Everyone expects to “start mind-body groups for patients on the first of the year.” There are promises all around to be in touch in the months ahead – in the supervision groups that Mohammed and the rest of our faculty will be leading every week throughout Gaza, and less formally too. Phone numbers are exchanged and a paper passed around for email addresses.
And then our leader in her long coat and head scarf reaches over and turns on the CD player and stands and claps, and sways a little, while her young colleague in the sports coat, his collar open and tie now loosened, rises and steps to his right toward Mohammed and the other men, and begins the steps that will take them and me too, our arms on each others’ shoulders, in a small happy circle, around our room.
Stress and the Economy: My Washington Post Article
Dear readers,
My piece, “Some Simple Steps for the Stressed-Out: Psychiatrist Offers Simple Steps for Coping with Uncertainty,” on dealing with stress from the economic downturn, appeared on the front page of the Washington Post Health Section today.
A middle-aged, working-class woman recently came to my medical office complaining that her back had “seized up.” Her husband had lost both his jobs and was feeling quite disheartened; not long after, her blood pressure had “jumped though the ceiling” and she began sleeping poorly.
Another patient came to see me suffering from crippling anxiety attacks. He had lost the better part of his considerable fortune in the economic collapse. Now he was waking in the middle of each night feeling his chest crushed, unable to breathe, half fearing and half wishing he would die.
I have been practicing psychiatry for 40 years, but I’ve never seen this much stress and worry about economic well-being and the future. There is a sense that the ground is no longer solid, that a system we all thought would sustain us no longer works as we were told it would. In the past, when patients reported job-related stress, it was from unfulfilling work and the anxiety of making choices. “Should I stay in this job that I can’t stand and keep feeling so unhappy?” they would say. Now, I hear about unmeetable mortgages, months without work, fears of ending life in a low-paying, entry-level job. “What went wrong?” my patients say. “What could I have done?” “How can I manage?”
In this uncertain time, symptoms of chronic illnesses — hypertension, back pain, diabetes — that were controlled or dormant are erupting. Low-level depression, whose hallmarks are feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, is endemic.
Large numbers of people across the country are trying to quiet their apprehension with drugs or drink, or have turned to antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications and sleeping pills. But after decades working not only in Washington but also with war-traumatized populations overseas, I’ve found there are simple strategies for helping people cope that are easy to learn, practice at home and, in these stressful times, free.
1.Begin a simple meditation practice. Loss — of jobs or economic security, as well as of a beloved person — is perhaps the greatest and most common of stressors, and the most frequent cause of anxiety and depression. Slow, deep breathing — in through the nose, out through the mouth, with the belly relaxed and soft, and the eyes closed — is a sure “evidence-based” antidote to the stress response that uncertainty provokes. Practicing this “soft belly” technique several times a day for several minutes each time quiets the “fight-or-flight” response that makes people anxious and agitated, and brings us what cardiologist Herbert Benson famously called “the relaxation response.” Financial advisers, child-care workers and soldiers back from a second tour in Iraq with whom I’ve worked have all found, in this simple practice, a source of calm.
2.Move your body. With the possible exception of talking with a sympathetic, skilled human being, physical exercise may be the single best therapy for depression. It’s very good for anxiety as well. Exercise has been shown in animal studies to increase cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain concerned with memory and emotion, which can be depleted by significant psychological trauma (and financial stress is one of the most significant traumas) or chronic depression. Exercise increases mood-enhancing neurotransmitters in our brains, and decreases the levels of stress hormones that exacerbate chronic illness.
It may not be easy to get moving when you’re feeling defeated, but every step you take, literally as well as figuratively, will encourage you to take the next one. Make sure you do something physical that you enjoy or once did enjoy. Aerobics or yoga classes may feel overwhelming or too expensive. Don’t worry: Dancing at home by yourself works just as well, and so does walking. Exercise is often the first item on my prescription pad.
3.Reach out to others. Human connection — to family, friends, co-workers in the same boat — is an antidote to the sense of aimlessness and isolation that may come from job loss or unexpected economic insecurity. Social connection also helps prevent the chronic illness that can often follow prolonged stress. I see the healing power of group membership every day in mind-body skills groups that colleagues and I organize, when a group member, demoralized and humiliated by job loss, realizes he or she is not the only one. Acknowledging and sharing (but not indulging) this sense of grief and pain is a remarkable source of strength for many people.
4.Find someone who will listen and help you take a realistic look at your situation. When the middle-aged woman with the “seized-up” back came to see me, we discussed her finances as well as her feelings. Although her husband had lost his jobs, her own job, in the health-care industry, was still secure. She and her husband would have to give up some of the “little luxuries” to which they’d been accustomed, but it was clear they could still manage. She needed to relax (using the soft-belly technique), recognize what she could and couldn’t do, give her husband a fair share of the household chores while he looked for another job, and generally unburden her mind, body and spirit. This simple exploratory conversation — and a subsequent heart-to-heart with her husband — allowed her to turn aside the cascade of anxious emotions. Her body began to repair itself.
5.Let your imagination help you find healing — and new meaning and purpose. The wealthy man who came to see me last winter paralyzed by anxiety attacks after losing much of his fortune was able to put his own trauma in perspective by using his imagination.
Though he still was, by most standards, wealthy, his sense of himself as a wise, sure-footed investor had been shattered. He did soft belly breathing to relax and began to cut out and copy pictures from magazines that seemed to him somehow hopeful. He spent days, he told me, copying a photo of a man his age, a grandfather apparently, standing with his arm around a young boy on the verge of the hole where the World Trade Center had been. “The tragedy in the picture is so much greater than my own,” he said, “and I realized that what’s really important is the connection between this man and boy, the hope for the future. I drew it, and I really started looking for this connection in my own life — a connection with meaning now, not money.”
Other patients find relief and assistance from imagining themselves in a safe place and consulting their inner “wise guide” to help them find peace, direction and meaning. This may seem kind of strange at first, but it’s an ancient process used in many indigenous cultures and is actually pretty easy.
First, after breathing deeply and relaxing, imagine someplace safe and comfortable, one you know or one that just arises at the moment in your imagination. As you sit there, you allow your “guide” to appear. Accept whatever image appears — a wise old man or woman, a relative, a figure from scripture or literature, or even an animal. Mentally introduce yourself, and ask this guide a question about what’s troubling you, and then “listen” to the response that comes into your mind. Let the dialogue with you and this guide continue. Often helpful guidance will emerge from your own intuitive understanding.
6.Speak and act on your own behalf. Sometimes this produces rapid and even material benefits: One patient, a financial analyst, talked to her colleague about impending cutbacks; they forestalled a layoff by offering their supervisor a job-share alternative. Often speaking up for yourself produces valuable information and greater peace of mind and clarity: An anxious nanny finally asked her employer, who was herself experiencing a significant decrease in income, if her own job was secure and discovered it was; an IT consultant, asking his boss for a straightforward response, discovered his job was likely to be eliminated and began the search for another job, early, unsurprised and still employed.
There are two common denominators to these six strategies for dealing with and healing from financial setbacks and the unnerving feeling that the ground has shifted. All of them remind us, in times when the economy has made us feel powerless, that there are things we can do to help ourselves. And none of them costs money.
You can read the original article here.
If you like what you read, please make a comment; it’s always great to hear from you here, but it also helps if you leave one on the Washington Post article so that they know you like reading articles with a focus on prevention, wellness, and self-care. You can either do this through their website form (if you login) or by emailing health@washpost.com. (I’m really enjoying the comments that are already there.) And for those of you who participate in social bookmarking, I also appreciate submissions to Digg, Deli.cio.us, Reddit, and other bookmarking sites.
Thanks for reading, and I hope the techniques in the article will be useful to you and to everyone in these difficult times.
Jim
A Better Litmus Test for Healthcare Reform
David Leonhardt’s “prostate cancer test” (The New York Times, July 8, 2009) is a good but incomplete one for healthcare reform.
In addition to removing financial incentives for high tech intervention, we need to educate clinicians in the impartial, critical analysis of all therapeutic options, and in supporting their patients as they act on the choices they make. For 10 years, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine has trained health professionals and patient advocates to do precisely this, as “CancerGuides®.”
We need as well to realize that expensive, Draconian treatment and “watchful waiting” are not our only choices. There is, as Dean Ornish is showing with peer-reviewed studies on prostate cancer - and a number of us are doing with heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, depression and post traumatic stress disorder – a far more promising third way. It is grounded in techniques of self-care – dietary modification, physical exercise, and mind-body approaches like meditation and yoga – and in group education and support.
This approach holds great promise for treating and preventing chronic illness of all kinds and for saving large sums of money. It should be central to healthcare reform.
A shortened version of this was published in the New York Times online Letters section on July 21, 2009.
CancerGuides Training in DC in June
Dear Friends,
Our exciting training program, CancerGuides® II will be offered June 11-14, here in DC (along with Food As Medicine). You can help us as we offer our groundbreaking, integrative trainings by telling everyone you know about the programs, posting the fliers in your offices and clinics, handing them out on the street, etc. etc. Download a flier here.
A quick note: CancerGuides II is absolutely appropriate and accessible for cancer survivors and their families, not only for professionals. Everyone will have the opportunity to meet leaders in the field of integrative care, and to get the most up-to-date practical information–about nutrition, yoga, massage, Chinese medicine, and cutting-edge alternative therapies among many other topics. We would love to see you there, and there are generous partial scholarships available. Check out the website (see above) to learn more.
I hope you understand that you all – staff and faculty, along with our Board, and all those who support and participate in our programs – are the foundation for all we do, the juice that keeps nourishing our work, nourishing me, and helping us to grow. I’m so eager to hear from you and to see you soon, or to meet you for the first time at one of our exciting upcoming trainings.
With love,
Jim
“Unstuck” E-book release!
Dear friends,
I have some exciting news—thanks to numerous requests, my latest book, Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression is being released as an e-book! In my publisher’s own words:
“your e-book will be with retailers tomorrow; it should be on sale within 48 hours on Amazon and by the end of next week everywhere.”
“Unstuck” is on Kindle at Amazon.com here (or will be soon).
A warm thank you to everyone who helped by requesting this format. I hope this additional release will allow me, through Unstuck, to help many more people struggling through depression and anxiety (and perhaps, antidepressants) to move toward health and wholeness.
All my best,
Jim
Progress in Gaza
I said that I would write more about our work in Israel and Gaza, but the work-and trying to find funding so that we can continue it-is taking up so much time (joyous, exciting time, to be sure) that I haven’t been able to write.
Still, I thought I would send along this very brief summary that I forwarded to our US Mind-Body Medicine faculty.
Hi everyone,
Just a couple of words from Gaza City: overwhelming, amazing, touching. That’s three words.
We (Jim, Amy, Afrim, Yusuf, Dan and Lee-Ann) had a great visit with our Israeli faculty. They are doing many interesting and exciting projects including groups that combine mind-body skills and Jewish spirituality, joint Israeli Jewish and Arab groups, and many groups for traumatized children and adults in Sderot. In fact, we made a visit to Sderot and had a chance to talk with teachers who are using mind-body skills in wonderfully creative ways with children in the SCIENCE AND RELIGION SCHOOL. The kids have experienced shelling on and off for eight years and are having all kinds of problems with concentration, bed-wetting and anger.
Naftali who heads up our Israeli program, is on the track of a major initiative in the South which will build on the work that he and his team have already done. We are working together on developing cooperative relationships and future funding.
Thanks to Danny Grossman, a friend to whom Aaron and Debbie Kaplan introduced us some years ago, (with able assists from Naftali and Smadar who handle the administrative work in Israel), we were all able to get into Gaza. It took a couple of extra days for Afrim and Yusuf, but Naftali and Tami and Ayelet from our Israeli faculty kept their spirits high while they waited. Once in Gaza, we began with visits with grieving families. There are whole sections of Gaza that have been completely destroyed and many thousands of people who are without homes. “I am very small,” one ten year old girl told us, “but the tent the 20 of us are staying in is even smaller.”
We went on for a day of meetings with our Gaza faculty. The next day, we had more site visits including one to Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose three daughters were killed. He’s an amazing man, an OBGYN who works in Israel as well as Gaza and through some miracle of wisdom and compassion, has managed to transform his suffering into a visionary project for the education of girls in Gaza-“not just so they will think, but so they will think freely”-and a mission to promote greater Israeli-Palestinian understanding.
We’re now about to start the 4th day of our PTP. Our Gaza faculty, which Jamil heads up, is doing virtually all the lectures and leading all the groups and our international team is consulting/supervising. The Gaza group is doing an absolutely wonderful job. They are so open-hearted and skillful-I’d say over the last 18 months, they’ve each lead anywhere between 6 and 20 groups and it shows.
Participants (there are over 140 of them) are speaking of issues that they have never before discussed and beginning to solve problems that have troubled them for years-not to mention finding practical ways to ease their high levels of anxiety and deal with nightmares, flashbacks, etc. All of them-faculty and participants-are so eager to learn and to share what they are learning. They are an inspiration to all of us.
There is much more to tell and I will when I have more time. For now, I send all of you my love as well as my gratitude for being with us on this and many other adventures.
Jim
Health care reform cannot wait, must not wait, and will not wait
Dear Friends,
I spent Monday afternoon, February 23, 2009, testifying on the strengths of integrative healthcare and our hope for healthcare reform at the hearing, “Principles of Integrative Health: A Path to Health Care Reform” by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). The video is comprehensive—click to read shorter coverage in the Huffington Post.
My colleagues (including Wayne Jonas, M.D. of the Samueli Institute, Robert Duggan, M.A., M.Ac. (UK), Dipl.Ac. (NCCA), of Tai Sophia, and others from institutions and the private sector) and I sincerely hope the time has come to change from a “disease-care” system to one truly centered on the patient and our wellness as a nation. Our current system is expensive, and ineffective at keeping us healthy. Turning to costly drugs ridden with side effects before trying natural approaches and wellness techniques is bankrupting our treasury and our health as a nation.
More to come—check out the video, and check back here for updates. It’s a very busy time for us here at the Center!
Best,
Jim
We Must Consider CAM for Depression
Dear Readers,
Despite a hectic schedule this January, I’m hoping to keep my blog up-to-date with the exciting events in my practice and at The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM).
A quick look at my schedule/to-do list:
I’ve just finished leading (along with Kathie Swift, MS, RD, LDN, my co-director) The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s professional training program in nutrition, Food as Medicine, in San Francisco.
We’re also moving forward with our exciting work with the US Military training health and mental health professionals who are working with active-duty military as well as in the Veterans Administration to use mind-body techniques with vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe depression, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. Over 100 of these professionals came to the first phase of our professional training program in mind-body medicine in Minnesota in October 2008. Here’s some data on the difference our training made to them. Most of them are returning for our advanced training–where we teach them how to lead the same kind of mind-body skills groups in which they participated in the first training—this weekend, from January 31-February 4th, once again in Minneapolis.
We’re also moving ahead with a research study funded by the Department of Defense on the use of our model with traumatized veterans and their families.
Last but not least, 30 of us–health professionals, policy makers, and just plain folks–gathered together in my home to develop a report to make recommendations for a National Health Plan to the Daschle/Obama Health and Human Services Administration. We’re continuing to explore ways for CMBM to be involved in creating a top-down support for truly universal and integrative health care for all Americans.
In other news, a recent op-ed of mine was published in the Clinical Psychiatry News, entitled “We Must Consider CAM for Depression.” You can read this succinct argument for wider use of integrative therapies, versus drug-centric treatment, here (you will have to create an account on this website to access it if you don’t already subscribe to CPN, though–sorry.) I was also published in the New York Times science section, writing about a friend and colleague of mine in Gaza going through the terrible bombings there. Read that one here.
Let me know your thoughts about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and how we’re bringing it out into the world! I’ll be in touch too.
Jim
The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First by Mark Hyman, MD Review by James S. Gordon, MD
The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First
by Mark Hyman, MD, Scribner’s: New York: 2009
Review by James S. Gordon, MD
I just finished The UltraMind Solution, a wonderful, ground breaking book that gives new and eminently practical insight into the causes and treatment of mood, behavior, and cognitive disorders. It’s a book I recommend to all of you without reservation.
The UltraMind Solution is by Mark Hyman, MD, a highly skilled, integrated Family physician who is a Center for Mind-Body Medicine Board Member, and a core faculty person in our Food As Medicine training. In The UltraMind Solution, Mark suggests that the most effective and, indeed, scientific way to address the epidemic of psychiatric disorders (affecting 1.1 billion people worldwide) is not with psychotropic drugs that treat postulated alterations in neurotransmitters, but with nutritional therapies that address the underlying biological imbalances that ultimately may disturb neurotransmitter functioning.
The UltraMind Solution is based on the principles of “functional medicine,” a systems approach to chronic disease and to the physical and emotional problems that beset our population. It is a road map for both patients and practitioners, a clear, thoughtful, guide to the ways the body can become imbalanced, and to the simple, natural methods-largely food and supplements-that can be used to restore the imbalances in the entire body, and most particularly, the brain. It’s a book that significantly deepened my own understanding of biological factors in depression. I believe, as well, it will enhance the information on biology that I present in my book Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out of Depression.
In a series of clear, well documented chapters, Mark discusses the “7 keys” to his program, and the ways that readers can use them. These keys include optimal nutrition, hormone balancing, decreasing inflammation, improving digestion, enhancing detoxification, increasing energy metabolism, and calming the mind. In The UltraMind Solution, Mark includes more than 400 well-chosen scientific references and dozens of case studies, together with diagnostic questionnaires. He offers as well clear steps that readers can take to use this information to help and heal themselves. You can learn more about The UltraMind Solution by going to the following website: http://www.ultramindhealth.com/cmbm.
Mark is also presenting a six part webinar series for clinicians on applications of functional medicine to brain and mood disorders. In particular, he will discuss diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to ADD/ADHD, autism, dementia, and depression. Access to these webinars is complimentary for practitioners who obtain a copy of The UltraMind Solution by going to the website below.
http://www.ultramindhealth.com/cmbm
PTSD on Wall Street and Main Street
“You don’t have to go to Gaza to treat posttraumatic stress disorder,” my friend said. “Just come to New York.”
It’s not that the mental and emotional state of the US population is indistinguishable from that of Gaza’s Palestinians — many of whom have lived with eight years of war and civil strife — thousands of lives lost and homes destroyed, and unemployment reaching 40-50 — some say 70-80– percent. Indeed, even those of us hit hardest three weeks into the worst of this unraveling financial crisis, are still technically experiencing only an “acute stress disorder.” But there are signs that each day, this growing financial crisis is traumatizing us more and more. Add to that our costly, life-claiming Middle East war, and we — like the Palenstinians in Gaza — may also be on our way to significant levels of population-wide traumatic stress.
Posttraumatic stress disorder, which by definition lasts longer than several weeks, is characterized by three sets of symptoms: “Hyperarousal,” an agitated state in which the heart may race, concentration and sleep are disturbed, startle responses are exaggerated and anger easily triggered; “Re-experiencing” the original trauma — in nightmares, intense and disturbing memories, and flashbacks; and “Avoidance” of trauma-related thoughts and feelings, coupled often with a sense of detachment and estrangement, emotional numbness and an apprehension about a bleak future.
All these are in abundant supply in those closest to the crisis — the ones who have lost jobs and pensions, older people who see their retirement savings melting away, and people of all ages who cannot keep up payment on their homes. Many who are, or were, working on Wall Street are sleeping fitfully, jiggling their knees uncontrollably in meetings, drinking and eating too much, losing their appetites, and popping antacids and tranquilizers. One broker friend is awake far into the night, worrying about her elderly clients’ inability to live on their diminished incomes and whether or not she will be able to pay her own child’s tuition. Others, like one 30-year Lehman Brothers veteran who is married to a colleague, have receded into states of frozen denial; acting as if somehow everything were still as it was. He dresses as meticulously as he always did and sits for hours at a computer which no longer registers his trades.
And the symptoms are also present with more or less intensity in many of the rest of us who feel the financial foundations crumbling under our feet. I have been hearing from retirees who are waking up in the middle of the night, panicked, to pore over diminished budgets, then fall asleep worrying that their fixed incomes will no longer permit them to live in the houses they saved a lifetime to buy. A colleague out West tells me her psychiatric inpatient service is overflowing with people whose loss of homes and jobs has undermined their precarious emotional, as well as economic, security. Meanwhile, anxious and depressed people, unable to afford gas for the long trip to the outpatient clinic, call in for more prescriptions for tranquilizers, antidepressants, and sleeping pills. And children may be just as deeply affected as their parents; according to The Washington Post, a recent national survey of 500 teenagers found that already, “70% fear ‘an immediate negative impact’ on the security of their families.”
Former senator Phil Gramm’s infamously dismissive comment declaring the US in the midst of a “mental recession” is likely to turn out to be true in a way he never intended. Financial irresponsibility and lack of oversight are indeed creating the conditions for “mental” disturbance. The associated loss of confidence and hope further threatens the trust upon which credit and the financial markets depend.
Even when trauma is reliably over, the feelings of being overwhelmed and stuck persist. Five years after the war in Kosovo, we found that 44% of all high school seniors in the Suhareka region still had symptoms of PTSD. And when stress is ongoing, its symptoms and the accompanying depression are continually reinforced. Some Americans will never recover financially or emotionally from the loss of jobs and homes and savings. Others will be long unemployed, and their misfortune and lack of income — and the emotional distress both bring — will affect businesses in their communities as well as in their own families and friends. Meanwhile, vast numbers, perhaps our entire population, will likely feel the uncertainty and vulnerability that the ongoing and deepening financial crisis is provoking — feelings that still bedevil so many who lived through the Great Depression. One recent landmark study on the influence of genetics and “life stress” showed that of all possible causes, financial setbacks were most likely to contribute to depression.
In Gaza and Israel — where the consequences and threats of terrorist bombings are ever-present — and in Kosovo and New Orleans, my colleagues and I have helped tens of thousands of fearful and vulnerable people in the midst of chaos. We teach them meditation, deep breathing and movement techniques, mental images, and exercise. Learning these techniques, they find places of calm and control within themselves, discover solutions to problems that had seemed unsolvable, and raise their depleted physical and emotional energy. Acting to help themselves, they find antidotes to the helplessness and hopelessness that are the hallmarks of depression and traumatic stress. Learning together they discover mutual support and a renewed sense of community.
In Gaza, in the most vulnerable parts of Israel, and in New Orleans, there is another factor that makes people’s stress and depression — and, yes, their anger as well — so much worse. This is the sense of being dismissed and neglected by the larger world on which they had once depended.
These feelings of neglect, deception, and disrespect are only increasing as the financial crisis deepens here and expands overseas. They must be addressed. The various bailouts are initial investments in confidence as well as credit, the first signs of a public assumption of responsibility. But they are only a down payment on the far more comprehensive measures that must follow, and should only be the first step in the government’s effort to regain the trust that is necessary to real recovery.
As a country, we must honestly admit to and address the causes of our crisis — greed, arrogance, and indifference. Then we must begin to pay honest, ongoing attention to the concerns of a population that feels betrayed, vulnerable, and abandoned. These steps will promote stress reduction as well as provide fiscal reassurance. Meanwhile, we have to learn, quite literally, to breathe deeply, to relax in the midst of fear and uncertainty, to trust that we, like the Israelis and Palestinians and New Orleanians, can grow and change through adversity. We cannot avoid the fear and the stress in the world in these troubled times. We can however, learn to live more peacefully with them.
Republished with permission from The Huffington Post
First published October 23, 2008, 10:52 AM EST at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-s-gordon/ptsd-on-wall-street-and-m_b_137160.html
