So they gave a speech at the Washington Institute three years ago and they were asked by Paul Wolfowitz is whether they perceive themselves as and they will turn their guns on israel. So basically if we assumed that he was correct, otherwise he sent me an email that the region is of this, what is happening is that we allowed the state to deploy this. So they are cultivating this again and so we know that we will eventually have to fight this, but who will initiate that . As opposed to others. Could you just make one last comment . Are a lot more people that want to deal with this as well. Thank you. You know, i always understood to state solution to automatically include gaza. But its practically an independent state all by else. What do you propose . And what you see with the future of israel and gaza. We left him in 2005 and i was done with lee opposed to it. But i think that the makes lemonade out of lemons. Because we left under no legal argument and kennedy argued in a serious way. But that is just because the world of which we live. So it cannot be argued by israel. So let them do what they want. If they want to call themselves palestine they can. If they want to call themselves afghanistan, they can. And they can do anything they want to. So to a certain degree we also understand its arguable and probably reasonable to claim that israel announces its claim to sovereignty. When we last i dont see how its possible how we renounced it when we remove removed remove the civilians. So i dont know, but i dont any reason to give them the same status as well. [inaudible question] first, i would like to day the clarity is wonderful in your writing. And as curious as to how you envision the impact of israels natural gas as well as the natural gas in europe today and how that will play out in this paradigm. Talk about that in the chapter because it is my contention that the most irresponsible come from the europeans instead of the arabs. Because really because that is part of the only Foreign Policy that has ever been. So i explain why in chapter 15. So reasonably a lot of people have talked about this. They will somewhat ruckus financially and i certainly dont believe in the capacity of europeans to do economic damage to israel. They are the second largest trading partner. Including growth rates and increased willingness to go against the eu policies. So what i consider to be the probable breakup of these in the future and also the fact that the progovernment is britain, really. And yet British Trade keeps increasing by leaps and bounds because the meter technology. After a certain degree the threats are much harder than the bite. But assuming the worst, israel has already been vastly expanding its trade relations with Asian Countries are in and year out between india and china and israel. As has to a degree with japan when you add in the fact that israel has now become the next exporter with the massive natural offshore gas that we have begun using. Then you see the damaged that europe would be capable of causing to the economy, it is real and i dont think in the near term it is paralyzing. I do think it is a mitigating actor that we have become a Net Energy Exporter and we have reserves of shale oil that are 60 of saudi arabias claim and waiting for the environmentalist to finally be defeated and as they claim this but they can produce oil for 40 per barrel, we will become a massive economic superpower but i am looking at the eggs. So thank you all very much for coming today. [applause] [applause] youre watching booktv. Nonfiction authors and books every weekend on a statue. Now on booktv, the coverage of the Los Angeles Times festival of books from the university of Southern California. The festival is on its 19th year and a host of over hundreds of authors and 150,000 attendees over two days. This year we have panels on feminism, World Politics and a discussion with scientists and carat diamond. We begin our coverage with a panel on the war featuring david finkel. Hello, i am a staff writer and im talking about the realities of war three distinguished writers who have attacked the subject from different angles. Has been documenting the effects of war on the human psyche. The most recent book, critically acclaimed thank you for your service chronicles challenged by american soldiers and families in wars aftermath. It has received numerous awards. The previous book, the good soldiers, best selling account of an Infantry Battalion won multiple awards, named the top 10 book of the year by the new york times, and hes an editor and writer for the the washington post, reporting from central america, asia, europe, and covered in war in kosovo and iraq. Among the honors are a Pulitzer Prize and genius grant in 2012. Heres david moore, a former marine infantry officer. He covered the wars in iraq and afghanistan for slate, salon, and virginia quarterly review. His first dispatch for the virginia quarterly review from iraq titled the big sock notes from the jar head undergrant was requireed in the best reading in 2007. Appeared in the new yorker, Foreign Policy, and surfers journal. In january 2015, hell release his book, biography of posttraumatic stress disorder. To the left is the author of childrens books trancelated into 20 languages. Her poem, stories, and essays appear in atlantic monthly, knew statesman, the guardian, and many other publication. Her memoir losing tim life and death of an American Contractor in iraq which is about her son comes out april 2014 from sink teeth publishings. Welcome our guests. [applause] so mr. Finkle, you follow the 216 Army Battalion in the reserve, thank you for your service and research. One of the central characters is Sergeant Adam shyman. Which would tell us the story . Well, sure. First of all, thanks for coming today. He might have been one of the 22 a day chris was referring to. Quick thing about that number. The l. A. Times was reporting on this figure. Its just to be clear, its not 22 iraq and afghanistan vettes a day. Its all veterans, and when you examine that 22, if you look at the 22 on a particular day, i mean, most the suicides are happening, but most of the folks have gone on from their service and done many other things. The great number are folks who are over60. Theres been other Life Experiences along the way. Its just worth pointing out, the assumption is its a direct line of a war experience to suicide. While thyme not saying its not, its not that it necessarily is. The other part of the 22 is that when we look at the 2011 numbers, the most recent, there is a spike in the number of young people who are taking their lives. Adam shoeman, happy to say, is not one of them, but might have been. I met him while i was reporting my first book, the good soldiers, when, during a quiet period, i was asking around one day, so, who is a great soldier i need to meet. One young officer said, so, this guy, shoeman, hes about the bestment time went by, got busy, did reporting, got quiet again, and then i saw this guy, walked into the room, and the great soldier who is waiting in that room was by himself. He was gaunt. He was haunted looking. He was sitting alone on his bunk. I introduced myself, and said, i hear youre a great soldier. He said, maybe so, but im leaving. What happened has happened so often that after three deployments, a thousand days in rather intense combat, this great soldier just couldnt do it anymore. I stayed with him until he left the war, cant remember if it was that day or the next day, but the helicopter out of there, was a man we can quarrel all day about the policies of the wars, but this was a guy, who by every measure had been a great soldier and as he walked to the helicopter out of the war, he was not feeling any sense of accomplishment or success, but this was a man in his mid20s cloaked in guilt and shame for having to leave, that he couldnt do it. Waiting for the helicopter, maybe six guys in line, helicopters come in, you can imagine a loud clattering scene, noise, dust, blah, blah, blah, the line moves forward, and when he gets to the front of the line, the guy stops him. He yells, next ones yours. Everyone leaves. Its him, by himself, waiting for the next helicopter, here it comes eventually, its a helicopter with a big red cross on the side, and he gets it. Its the helicopter for the injured and the dead, and thats who hes become. Thats his identity now. Hes injured. Hes dead. Hes done. He goes home. My sense in the first book, and im almost done. The first book was not to write about the iraq war, but to write intimately, journalistically about young men going into a war at a particular moment, type of journalism i do does not involve something happened and them you go afterwards and do interviews about what happened. You show up. You stay. You watch what unfolds. In this case, the illuminating question in 2007, when the war seemed to have reached its lost moment and, perhaps, its tragic moment, is what becomes of a young man who goes into a war at such a moment, and adam turnedded out to be one of the answers i got. When its time for the next book, because i wrote about the deployment of the infan ri battalion, it was a rough deployment, came home, book came out, and they began getting in touch with me saying they were not doing very well. Anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, things they were not expecting, and so it occurred to me is that tragic moment, make this was it, not there, but here as all of these people who did well in the battalion now get down to trying to recover from the experiences of what they did, what they saw, what they didnt do, what they tried not no see, and on it goes. Adam comes home, and thank you for your Service Begins with him, opening line of the book is two years later, adam drops the baby. The book goes on from there to trace not only adam, but his wife, their children, and this whole cluster in kansas of people who served well and are now trying to get better. I have a question about the reporting of the book, david. Okay. Reads semilessly now, but how do you get a map for it . You have vets around the country, you dont know which ones necessarily something that will be useful to you in your book will happen to. How do you with only one family at a time, how do you how do you device a plan to devise a plan to use time first timely . Well, if the figures are right, of the 2 million americans deployed doctorately in iraq and directly into iraq and afghanistan,25 returned with some type of psych logical wounds to contend with. Thats a lot of characters to choose from; right . Adam was the starting point, and, again, the type of journalism i do depends on being present, and the fact i was with that battalion for eight months, i didnt visit the story, but i stayed with it. When bad things happen to the dpies and i was present for that, i didnt become a problem for the soldiers, but help them understand what a reporter does. When it came time for the secede book, some trust had been established and rather looking anywhere, i could start with adam and just build out from there, and its just the same thing. First book embedding in war with people, and second book was embedding with families. The trust came from the first book because everybody in that book, i knew from a particular war experience. It just its the usual journalism thing. I want to know what youre going through, i think it needs to be written about, and i want to come hang out with you. I dont know hoping it takes, ill be around a lot. By the way, you cant see the book until its published because i cant im writing about you. You cant be your own editor or a censor of your story. It requires a leap of faith on your part, and if youre good to go, lets go. After that, what do you do . You hang out. You are filled with indecision because every day with that family i was not with another family thinking, what am i missing . Shouldnt i be over there . Its just, you do the best you can. Okay, thanks. David morris, your book is the evil hours biography of post posttraumatic stress disorder. Tell us how that formed into a book. I came from a military family, and when my dad served in vietnam, my neighbors had. I dont really know how to answer the question because its all of my life grew out of military. I felt like vietnam was a lot of my childhood. That was the first and ptsd comes from vietnam, but not recognize the until 1980. It actually grew out of the vietnam war experience. In writing the book, i was trying to find my interests, and that was one of the first question i remember ever asking my father was what happened in vietnam . He was washing the car at the time, and i remember how he took the hose off the car, the stream of water going into the sidewalk, one of these, you know, moments, and you know, went into the service to really once i left college, and ptsd is not on the minds of marines and soldiers a lot on active duty, but if you are familiar with the literature of war and seen taxi driver, the deer hunter, any of the Great American war movies, you get a sense. Ptsd is in film. Some of the best documents of ptsd are in film so you grow up with the awareness of it if you have any sense of history, and i pixed that up from my dad, his friends, just growing up around marines. I grew up in san diego, inarguably the most biggest military city in america. I felt like i was steeped in it. We invaded iraq, a war posted before anyone thought it up, and i found that a lot of my friends from college, buddies i train with were all over there, and it was impossible to ignore the war. I was working as a reporter at that point, and, you know, people make joikses about ptsd all the time in iraq. You got the ptsd thing going . Its a source of jokes, and, you know, its juch a common its the fourth most diagnosed psychiatric disorder in the world, and associated with soldiers in a big way, but its something that if youre around the military and spend any time on base or around soldiers, you know, around marines who returned, its part of the conversation. I was in a bar the other day, and i ran into someone who started a private ptsd clinic. Its everywhere in Southern California, which has the largest in the country. We live in a trauma culture in some ways, but its part of the environment at this point. You wrote there a growing number of sigh countrytists and researchers understanding ptsd and the nature as an ailment. They argue its locked into a mind set that over diagnoses without them with the ability to heal themselves. Can you explain the gist of the controversy . Well, its people have people are they hear theres criticism of ptsd, its hard to wrap your head around the idea. Theres a surplus of sympathy for veterans. We all want that we want to thank them for our service, and thats something i preermt the the title of davids book. People thank my for service because i served i had not served in iraq, and people thanked me for it, and i think some veterans said, iraq veterans, said, i feel like everyone assumes we all have ptsd, and that we pathology jiz the experience, and if you went there and blown up once or spent a week in baghdad that youre broken. I think there is a tent sigh to look at soldiers being through it and looking as if there was always a negative damaging experience with them, when, in fact, 85 of people go to war and are generally okay. I mean, its not you know, the war stays with all veterans for all their lives, but to assume that everyone has been damage by it is kind of going too far, and i think we have to be honest and i think there is so the disconnect, emotional goals between civilians and soldiers is so great, and i think civilians, people have not served, peel such a burden to give something to give Something Back to veterans, and i think ptsd has become this way of this gift that, you know, if we can extend sympathy in the form of the disorder, in the form of the acronym, the four letters, that, can somehow make up that can, you know, that makes up for the fact that we sent you to war, and you got screwed up, or you, you know, you had to sacrifice a lot of your life to, you know, these stupid wars. I think there its a way for its a coping mechanism, and this is something i heard a lot of soldiers say, and marines say that, well, when someone thanks me for the service, i feel its about them, their emotional needs met, not mine. There civilians say that because they feel something. They feel uncomfortable, guilty, feel they want to communicate something, and so they say, thank you for your service, and i think ptsd is related to than the instinct i want pedes an honest conversation . Absolutely. I think we thank people thank me. Ive been thanked repeatedly. Im not a combat veteran, i served in the peacetime marine corp. So most veterans i talk to says it does make them feel uncomfortable. Its weird. Its easy to complain and say, well, you know, america didnt do this or that, i dont know what i want people to say to me except maybe nothing and lets have a conversation instead. Lets talk about if youre interested and want to talk about iraq, ill talk until your ears are blue about iraq. Lets get into it, talk about travel poll politics, talk about the middle east was a creation on the maps, you know, british cartographers. Lets get into it. Dont talk through the bull appointments what you think war was to you, what you saw on television. I, you know, im dying that you know, i love talking about iraq with people. If they are willing to have an honest conversation, ill tell you how scared i was, how freakedded out i was, you know, all the mystical experiences i had, it was a quasireligious experience for me. How much i loved it. How much i miss it. Ill talk about it all day, but people get freaked out, civilians get scared, and its a taboo subject, its like talking about rape or sexual abuse. People think its an untouchable subject, and i guess i, you know, i want rather than thanking me for the service or thanks a veteran, take five minutes and think of a question, like, hey, what was it like . How do you feel . What unit were you with . Learn the unites. Like hemmingway words a meaningless to veterans. They want to talk about days, places, and their buddys names. Think of a different way to approach this in topic, i guess. A ranger and captain and civilian crier, shot and killed himself in 2004. Memoir is losing tim american death of a contract in iraq out this year. You wrote tim was disrespondent and enrage by the Bush Administration in baghdad, corruption, incompetence, greed, lives, the stupidity, disillusionment cut deep. You said we, as a nation, adopted different images of our brave young men and women in the armed forces versus sleazy contractors. Can you explain . Yes. Is this on . Okay. Id like to start by piggybacking on davids comment about the 222 a day because my son does not count among the 22 a day because he went to iraq as a contractor. He was in love with the military all his life. He started as ad toddler with an obsession with the weapons of war and never outgrew it. He had, to my mind, all the time he was growing up, a naive reverence called the warrior spirit, and he did talk about valor and honor and glory and he spent three years in rotc and eight in the reserve, and in the rereceiver, he volunteered for everything he could. He was sent to bosnia and the congo and angola and he learned how to run a demining operation. He was doing that as a soldier out of the embassy, and the army decided to privatize that job. At that point, that seemed to me an excellent thing. He left the reserve and waited six months for clearance and went back to do the same job as a contractor. Then, of course, the Contracting Company that he worked for was by another, and the Merger Company as well as in publishing. But, and had a stepson, young cord, we want for another demining operation, and then he was given the option by his company of going to washington and iraq, and he went to iraq with fabulous enthusiasm, and at that point, he admired bush, believed the wmds would be found, believed it necessary, bought it all. He was there for seven months, but when he came home, i feel that this one leg that he had to stand on, which was his belief in the military values had been ripped from him, he was appal at, for example, this banding of the baptist army, and he had, if you look at it on paper, all of the symptoms of ptsd. He couldnt sleep. He was always aroused. He was sometimes distant. Sometimes frightened. Sometimes irrationally angry and so forth. What happened in his case, and this is complicated, but ill try to simplify it. His wife, after his suicide, sued for benefits for her and the children, and what the trial came down to was did he or did he not have ptsd, at which point, seemed to me, this is not an answer to anything. This does not satisfy any need any of us have to understand what happens to tim, but that what a courtroom does, and its very difficult to prove ptsd. There are psychiatrists who gave opposite answers to the question, and for six years, my daughterinlaw pursued this through the cores with reveals, appeals, reviews, and ultimately was denied benefits for her and the children because you could not properly say he had ptsd. That experience was valuable to me in the way youre describing, i think, david, because i understood that there are kinds of trouble, and there are recognizable symptoms, if you like, of the trouble that happens in the minds of young men who go through an experience like this, but labeling is not really helpful. John, wrote two wonderful books about his work with vietnam veterans, in vietnam and in america, has come up with through his work with veterans, came up with the phrase, moral injury, and that seems to describe what happened to my son. As described, if you volunteer with great enthusiasm with the army and find yourself in a situation you cannot then get out of because once you say yes, you cant say partially no, and then you find that your superior offices are giving you orders that are, in my sons words, red, stupid, greedy, wrong. , what what happens is a moral injury. It is an injury to that idealism with which it began, and that, im in fact glad i wrote this book losing tim before i came across the phrase moral injury because i think i might have believed that was the answer that i was seeking what happens to my son. In your book, you say, when i write about my sop, i have levels, tools to give me the illusion of control. As a writer, youre trained to perceive and study emotions. Im curious, could you elaborate on that passage and tell us what the experience of losing a son in these circumstances, how it might be different for you as a writer opposed to someone with maybe less of a habit of introspection or verbal facility . Well, the difference it made for me was that writing is what i do to make sense of any kind of chaos. Its instinctive and immediate. I remember i dont remember much about plane trip back where we buried my son, but i do remember that i sat writing a furious letter to the nra. Which then eventually was altered into the first essay that i wrote about him, which was published by the st. Pete times and happens to be at that point, but when i look back at it, it seems to me that the writing help me in three different ways. One was that it, at first, i just slashed down everything. The greed, the loss, the apinger in my journal. At some point, i began to realize that i had been enormously helped by books that other people have written about suicide, depression, soldiering, and it seemed to me what i was doing in my journal was telling the story of my brief, but i was not telling the story of my son, where as my experience, day by day was grief, memory, grief, memory, and that there rose in me a desire to tell his story, which i know its not his story of his story. Its mine. He would not have told this story in the same way, and he would not come to the conclusions i came to, but it was a way for me to try to understand through his life what happened to him, you never come to app understanding. There comes a place that you can go no further. That was the impulse towards the book. Those two things to tell his story in a way that keeps him alive, and in a way that might help other people. Curiously, david morris and i were just talking about. Curiously, i find that now having written a meme roar as close to the facts as i understand them as i possibly can, i am freed, and now im writing a play in which im changing characters and purposes and place and i feel quite free to use emotions that are still in me. In this very different way. Thank you, janet. Along with the countrys habit of lionizing veterans, we have a va system with serious shortcomings. The va backlog is already a joke on comedy central. Its well known that the battle for benefits goes on year after year, and im curious how you three would respond to the seeming contradiction between the fact that we lionize our vets and yet as david morris writes, the shortcomings in the va system seems to show as society we do not feel the responsibility for what happens to them when they return. Yeah, i think a lot if you go i wish next time we held a vote, like to declare war and intervene in the hospital, hold it in a va hospital. I still go back to the hospital in la jolla sometimes just to soak in the history because you can go there and see world war ii vets, vietnam vet, the whole thing, and it is, the va, its the second, Largest Department in the u. S. After the pentagon. Its huge. We spend a lot of money on veterans, not enough. Its overly centralized and suffers from not fully understanding and being serious in the way it should be serious about dealing with people on a personal level. The biggest the va in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 began a new roll out of what they call Gold Standard treatments which are basically one size fits all mass produced therapies. Prolonged exposure, all on 60 minutes a few months ago, prolonged exposure and cbt, more of a talking therapy, and one of these, Long Exposure has a dropout rate of 60 , and prolonged exposure, the va niece number one, spent the most money on this therapy involves you describing your worst experiences, not one time, not five times, not ten times, but ideally a hundred times in a row. At the aid of Virtual Reality. Yeah, and Virtual Reality exposure therapy is a more expensive, big ticket item, ufc was involved in the technology which is salacious. Ive been through that therapy. It does not work. Theyve doubled down, spent money on these therapies that are questionable with serious side effects because they needed to roll out and create a therapy treating tens of thousands of veterans fast, and to be seen doing this in a way. Theres far less attention when i went to the va, i just the the to talk to somebody that had maybe had a masters in psychology and knew something about counseling. That never happen. I was put on a seven month list, did exposure therapy, hated it, made my symptoms worst, and at the end, i said, can what can i did to see i just want to see what else is out there. We have to put you back in the seven month list. They are just not it va spends a lot of money, serious, smart people that work in the va, some of the most smart, dedicated, most innovative experienced coups counselors that come from there, no one spends more in the world on Treatment Research and training than the United States vat dissh vet raps another mrgs. They are the lead agency in the world on ptsd research and treatment. I dont they they its not decentralized enough. I dont think they have enough qualified counselors, just, you know, basic counselors to talk to veterans and deal with them op a human level. But you get a mass produced, sort of like a, you know, like they are producing, like, they think about weapon systems, make one that we can do hundred thousand times in a row, and itll work for everybody. I just dont you know, its a really, really tough problem. The va trying to solve the vas problem is Like Fighting a war all its own. You have to have a campaign plan, bring smart people in, have public you have to have a serious review process. You know, i dont know why they have not why eric is still in charge of the va considering the poor track record. I dont know why they continue to use these flawed therapies. You know, theyve become its odd because ptsd grew out of the antivietnam war movement. It was heavily associated with the left, where all of the people who opposed vietnam war, ron coveck is a notable example, marine veteran played by tom cruise. He was a big part of that whole group, and yet, the va has become this orthodox, theyve become thee the zen masters of ptsd, and they basically dictate the research agenda, dictate the public agenda, and theyve kind of become fixed this their ways about how ptsd can be looked, how it will be treated as a public subject is largely dominated by the va. International organizations the u. N. Communicates and looks to the va for leadership in research. We fund ptsd research around the world in netherlands, london, south africa, and we pay for the ptsd research because we have the money. Anyone else care to comment . Id like to say the of thing, which is there is no va for the contractors, although many of the contractors are like my son, recent p vet rans who go into war zones for the reasons they went into the war to begin with. The idea was that in the privatization, they pay them well and cut them lose. Theres no briefing. Theres no debriefing. There is no contact with the wives for the symptoms they might look for, nothing. They are very well paid, and being very well paid when they are working among the soldiers, there is a natural tension that grows up, belter paid than soldiers by far, but they are cut lose. Thats all. If i could widen it. To some extent, at least theres some attempt in putting a system in place to offer Mental Health assistance to people who need it, flawed as it is. Thats the other part. The thing that my reporting brought me to for the book was just the good intentions are one thing, but the other side is its an ad hoc, haphazard system. Three quick examples from the book. Three soldiers, all who reached the point, all who did well, came home and for various reasons timely worked up the courage to say they needed help, which another story, but they did, and small window, they needed help. The first guy, he goes into a varun ptsd program in to topek, kansas, and he gets seven weeks to work tout. The next guy, when its his moment, he wants to go for seven weeks, but theres a long list at that appointment. The caseworker looks around, and she finally finds a four week program for him in colorado. This is not a va program, but a try program. Okay, one guy gets seven weeks to work it out. Another guy gets four weeks to work it out. Along comes the guy i was talking about earlier, adam. His moment arrives where its clear he needs help. The seven week program is full. The waiting list, and four week program is full with the waiting list, and the case worker finds something in northern california, its not va or tricare, but donor supportive. And the guy says, yeah, okay, come here, but the deal is four months minimum. You stay as long as as it takes to tear if apart and figure it out. Seven weeks, four weeks, at least four months, and its where you go is not dependent on your particular, peculiar needs for recovery. It comes down to where theres nobody, and i try awfully hard, and i think i succeeded at keeping my own opinions out of these books. They are not my stories, but the stories of the soldiers and families, but i, you know, i think its fair to say that if i had a kid who servedded and them came home and needed help, and i learned that there were these three options available, i would want i would expect the best for him. Its the least they can do, but everything is on the other hand. On the other hand, the four Month Program is not a broad scale workable model. They are just too many folks who need help right now to have programs like that, so what do you do . Apart from the time spent in the programs, what specific therapies seem to be most effective among the people that you followed . Well well, so, they relied on cbt and, you know, lets return to the events, just what david was talking about, and own it, and, you know, just replay it so its not so traumatic that when it comes up, its smooted smoothed out, and you control the moment. What happened at the four Month Program is that guy had the time, and you may agree with this or may not agree, but you have the time to do it, take the folks and take them well past the traumatic moment, back towards as much as they could remember as what happened before that moment or the accumulation of the moments of the you know, go back to the beginning, the the childhood, not as a trite way to excuse what you might have done, not to say that everything depends on the patterns of your life, but his thinking was if you can understand by learning about yourself enough to know who you were in the moments before the traumatic event, then youll have an easier time understanding how you behaved in the first controlled moments after the traumatic event, and you might be more maybe not forgiveness, but theres understanding built in. So that seemed you know, for is that perfect . No. For whats available out there, seemed like a good shot. One quick note, i interviewed a couple ptsd survivors, they all seem war veterans, rape survivors, and one of the most powerful therapies is yoga, it changes, and yoga helps people be on an even keel with their body, and lowers the hoer mopes, be in a stable centered state, and so a lot of the va is spending money on this, doing Yoga Research all over various va centers, and a2keugsally, the eastern philosophy, took part in a repetition study, repeating a montra, which i didnt find effective, but the people in the study did. A lot of the alternative therapies, have nothing to do with Sigmund Freud or classic psychological theories are powerful, but they are weird, strange, little strange to take a bunch of marines say, now put your leg behind your head, and that does not always go over so well at first, but, you know, particularly in Southern California where yoga is common, theres tons of teachers out there. I have friends that teach on base, 29 palms, california, extraordinary effective, went toff invest no those that have like a hard sell, but its powerful. I know one rape victim for several hours and it saved her life. It was a huge, huge she went through exposure therapy, and that did nothing for her. You have to expand definition of what therapy is, basically. Occurred to me was a lightbulb as david talk that for me, no doubt, the book i had written about is the process you described. That i start with childhood and try to understand how the patterns of the life could have led him where they did. Its story telling; right . Yeah, yeah. Theres a old thought, whoever said it first said is better, but in the life basically absurd and chaotic anyway, the only chance you have with makingceps of it, and living an optimistic life is turn these things into stories. Whether youre writing a book or trying to understand life, theres moves we have to do to gain control of it. Now, is that cpt . I dont know. I saw some value with some guy, not everybody, but some value in what cpt was doing. The bigger problem, i felt, was, oh, my god, overreliance on medication, and i mean, theres one guy in the book, i hope hes taken 40 pills every day, and its they were not all separate. It was a thing where, so, you are depressed . Take this one. Still depressed . Well, take this in addition to this one. Anxious . This it is not news. Its just but the overmedication was stunning, and a lot of the reason for the over medication is because of the under representation of people, especially in areas where soldiers tend to come from. There are there are not an abundance of psychologists and social workers, therapists, and qualify counselors able to help, so guys show up, all right, well work on it. Here, take this pill, take this pill, generalizing, obviously, but its a significant problem. We have ten minutes left. I promise that id open up to adz yens questions. Please, step up to the microphone here. Pstd representatives, but you never explained what it met. Posttraumatic stress disorder. As i understand, ptsd is many different things, but it is, foirs and foremost, a category, psychiatric category disorder involving intrusive syndrome, symptoms like flashbacks, and hypervigilance, where you are over, too switched on, exchting an attack at any moment, and that alternates with emotional numbing, numbed out, feeling nothing, and there is about 18 symptoms, but those are the three basic symptom areas, intrusive systems like nightmares and flashbacks, hypervigilance, just totally angry and waiting forren attacker, and then being numbed out. Thats how i understand it. Understand its a long story, but ptsd was invented, basically in 1980, but has a history that extends all the way back, you know, in all of human history, you know, in the gentleman who wrote the forward for her book, finds it in the odyssey. It is common, but it tends to be inflected by the culture. Flashbacking. Civil war veterans did not have flashbacks, but haunted by ghosts. There was a supernatural inflexion to it prior invention of film and television. Flashbacks as we call them grew out of the film culture and culture of the 1970s. It came from the Antiwar Movement in the while. What do you think of the fact we have gotten away from the point where they think of the human cost of people going to war . They dont take that into consideration. They, you know, people involved with wars, obviously, were unavoidable, and i remember growing up with the baby sitter whose husband came home from vietnam, and i just remember it struck me when i started reading about the iraq veterans, and i remember the thousand yard stare she had, and stare and struck me that, you know, how did we forget thfsz happening to people when they came back from war and not be prepared . Human cost is one of the those phrases that falls easily into the account of the war without thinking what it is. One of the things i think about is 22 veterans a day means 22 mothers a day. I think heres a way to think about it. Forgive me, not they have not been pop pew wars, and its not like a lot of americans have a particular stake in the wars. Its an allvolunteer force, professional force now, and you know the stats, less than 1 of American Families have had somebody directly in these wars, and so go to the door, not here, no factories shut down to build weapon so guys would not get blown up, but they were unpop popular wars by professional force in a far away country. You dont have to care until you have to caring and this is not a suggestion for con screenings, but its just to state the obvious, its not how do you forget about the human cost . Its not just that. Nobodys thinking about the wars a lot of people are not thinking about the wars very much at all, so human cost is one of the casualties of that. I remember the girl in arizona seeing gold stars in windows in the neighborhoods, and there were quite a few of them, and one of the things that i did on memorial day after tim died was to make a big gold star and put it in the window, but, you know, that was a kind of sentimental thing for me to do. Other appalling statistic from the wars is the number of traumatic brain injuries. Im sure theres overlap between that and posttraumatic stress disorder. I wonder if you could commented on how many pbis there are and a quick little in the time allotted, a background on that as well. I dont feel actually qualified to talk to that, but theres two circles of symptoms, they overlap to the large degree, and i think, to be honest, i think were just now in the opening phases of a campaign of understanding what a means. We, the brain is has more connections than stars in the known universe, so we dont fully understand what happens when you when experienced. I went think two ied attacks. I dont know i didnt lose consciousness, so they were not profound injuries, but they are hard to say what the long term impacts of those are. Interestingly, the researchers i spoke to look at the nfl and see a very useful analogous data base. You look at, you know, locally, look add what happened to junior, experiencing concussion after concussion after con cushion. One of the sister units david was embedded in, had people that had generally had a four ied rule, you had three con cushions, three red shirt concussions, you were sent home. There is a general awareness of it. I dont think the neurology, just getting into the basics of the understanding of it. Its like, you know, the program in the 60s, just starting out the fundamentals of what is at stake there. Interestingly, one thing i would say, though, is this is a weird effect. If you are wounded, lose consciousness, likelihood of you getting ptsd drops by 50 . Theres something that happens in the immediate six hours after an attack or wounding that changes the way the memory is stored. Neuroscientists have a handle on that, so and kind of a paradoxic way, if you suffer a fairly profound brain injury and lose consciousness, psychologically, you are in a slightly better position, if that makes sense. I dont know how to explain it, but its it is there is shows how and we dont know why that is, but shows oh complicated and delicate a machine, the mind is. Theres some overlap. Youre right. Of course theres a lot more posttraumatic brain injury, has to do with the fact that so many people in other wars who would be dead are not dead in these wars because of better equipment, and these are low blasts coming up. You get your brain rattled, lose consciousness for a bit, and you got youre rearrange the, got some things that are hartble, to deal with. Its funny, on the hierarchy of these things, i i think guys with with ptsd wishing for tbi because theres a brain scan to say, oh, theres proof, did something physically wrong with me, and guys with this, so wish that they were missing a leg so they could say, oh, look, theres something wrong with me. I can believe this. All of that gets back to the whole stigma of psychological wounds even organic underneath it. The inability for the rough and tough guys, especially to believe something may have happened to them and then go forward from there. What you talked about, and treatments have to do with a traumatic event. Majority of cases, there is a traumatic event its traced to or just develops and there is nothing you can attribute to . Could be one thing or