WEBVTT 00:00:00.059 --> 00:00:03.983 One in four people suffer from some sort of mental illness, 00:00:03.983 --> 00:00:08.277 so if it was one, two, three, four, it's you, sir. 00:00:08.277 --> 00:00:09.836 You. Yeah. (Laughter) 00:00:09.836 --> 00:00:13.184 With the weird teeth. And you next to him. (Laughter) 00:00:13.184 --> 00:00:14.239 You know who you are. 00:00:14.239 --> 00:00:16.636 Actually, that whole row isn't right. (Laughter) 00:00:16.636 --> 00:00:21.810 That's not good. Hi. Yeah. Real bad. Don't even look at me. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:21.810 --> 00:00:26.923 I am one of the one in four. Thank you. 00:00:26.923 --> 00:00:29.933 I think I inherit it from my mother, who, 00:00:29.933 --> 00:00:32.747 used to crawl around the house on all fours. 00:00:32.747 --> 00:00:35.794 She had two sponges in her hand, and then she had two 00:00:35.794 --> 00:00:40.376 tied to her knees. My mother was completely absorbent. (Laughter) 00:00:40.376 --> 00:00:42.684 And she would crawl around behind me going, 00:00:42.684 --> 00:00:46.249 "Who brings footprints into a building?!" 00:00:46.249 --> 00:00:48.599 So that was kind of a clue that things weren't right. 00:00:48.599 --> 00:00:53.791 So before I start, I would like to thank 00:00:53.791 --> 00:00:58.477 the makers of Lamotrigine, Sertraline, and Reboxetine, 00:00:58.477 --> 00:01:03.400 because without those few simple chemicals, I would not be vertical today. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:03.400 --> 00:01:08.237 So how did it start? 00:01:08.237 --> 00:01:12.356 My mental illness -- well, I'm not even going to talk about my mental illness. 00:01:12.356 --> 00:01:14.669 What am I going to talk about? Okay. 00:01:14.669 --> 00:01:19.071 I always dreamt that, when I had my final breakdown, 00:01:19.071 --> 00:01:21.610 it would be because I had a deep Kafkaesque 00:01:21.610 --> 00:01:24.023 existentialist revelation, 00:01:24.023 --> 00:01:28.368 or that maybe Cate Blanchett would play me and she would win an Oscar for it. (Laughter) 00:01:28.368 --> 00:01:31.475 But that's not what happened. I had my breakdown 00:01:31.475 --> 00:01:33.465 during my daughter's sports day. 00:01:33.465 --> 00:01:37.190 There were all the parents sitting in a parking lot 00:01:37.190 --> 00:01:41.197 eating food out of the back of their car -- only the English -- 00:01:41.197 --> 00:01:47.424 eating their sausages. They loved their sausages. (Laughter) 00:01:47.424 --> 00:01:52.056 Lord and Lady Rigor Mortis were nibbling on the tarmac, 00:01:52.056 --> 00:01:54.519 and then the gun went off and all the girlies started running, 00:01:54.519 --> 00:01:59.730 and all the mummies went, "Run! Run Chlamydia! Run!" (Laughter) 00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:03.598 "Run like the wind, Veruca! Run!" 00:02:03.598 --> 00:02:06.065 And all the girlies, girlies running, running, running, 00:02:06.065 --> 00:02:09.010 everybody except for my daughter, who was just standing 00:02:09.010 --> 00:02:11.777 at the starting line, just waving, 00:02:11.777 --> 00:02:14.108 because she didn't know she was supposed to run. 00:02:14.108 --> 00:02:18.457 So I took to my bed for about a month, and when I woke up 00:02:18.457 --> 00:02:23.050 I found I was institutionalized, and when I saw the other inmates, 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:27.442 I realized that I had found my people, my tribe. (Laughter) 00:02:27.442 --> 00:02:30.930 Because they became my only friends, they became my friends, 00:02:30.930 --> 00:02:33.928 because very few people that I knew -- Well, I wasn't 00:02:33.928 --> 00:02:37.298 sent a lot of cards or flowers. I mean, if I had had a broken leg 00:02:37.298 --> 00:02:39.462 or I was with child I would have been inundated, 00:02:39.462 --> 00:02:43.138 but all I got was a couple phone calls telling me to perk up. 00:02:43.138 --> 00:02:44.838 Perk up. 00:02:44.838 --> 00:02:49.545 Because I didn't think of that. (Laughter) 00:02:49.545 --> 00:02:52.845 (Laughter) (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:52.845 --> 00:02:57.122 Because, you know, the one thing, one thing that you get with this disease, 00:02:57.122 --> 00:03:01.088 this one comes with a package, is you get a real sense of shame, 00:03:01.088 --> 00:03:03.400 because your friends go, "Oh come on, show me the lump, 00:03:03.400 --> 00:03:05.811 show me the x-rays," and of course you've got nothing to show, 00:03:05.811 --> 00:03:08.905 so you're, like, really disgusted with yourself because you're thinking, 00:03:08.905 --> 00:03:11.721 "I'm not being carpet-bombed. I don't live in a township." 00:03:11.721 --> 00:03:15.169 So you start to hear these abusive voices, but you don't hear one abusive voice, 00:03:15.169 --> 00:03:18.028 you hear about a thousand -- 100,000 abusive voices, 00:03:18.028 --> 00:03:22.037 like if the Devil had Tourette's, that's what it would sound like. 00:03:22.037 --> 00:03:24.665 But we all know in here, you know, there is no Devil, 00:03:24.665 --> 00:03:26.544 there are no voices in your head. 00:03:26.544 --> 00:03:28.218 You know that when you have those abusive voices, 00:03:28.218 --> 00:03:31.119 all those little neurons get together and in that little gap 00:03:31.119 --> 00:03:34.777 you get a real toxic "I want to kill myself" kind of chemical, 00:03:34.777 --> 00:03:37.523 and if you have that over and over again on a loop tape, 00:03:37.523 --> 00:03:39.419 you might have yourself depression. 00:03:39.419 --> 00:03:42.102 Oh, and that's not even the tip of the iceberg. 00:03:42.102 --> 00:03:45.704 If you get a little baby, and you abuse it verbally, 00:03:45.704 --> 00:03:49.161 its little brain sends out chemicals that are so destructive 00:03:49.161 --> 00:03:53.153 that the little part of its brain that can tell good from bad just doesn't grow, 00:03:53.153 --> 00:03:56.608 so you might have yourself a homegrown psychotic. 00:03:56.608 --> 00:04:00.085 If a soldier sees his friend blown up, his brain goes into 00:04:00.085 --> 00:04:03.599 such high alarm that he can't actually put the experience into words, 00:04:03.599 --> 00:04:06.373 so he just feels the horror over and over again. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:06.373 --> 00:04:08.746 So here's my question. My question is, how come 00:04:08.746 --> 00:04:12.791 when people have mental damage, it's always an active imagination? 00:04:12.791 --> 00:04:16.010 How come every other organ in your body can get sick 00:04:16.010 --> 00:04:18.714 and you get sympathy, except the brain? NOTE Paragraph 00:04:18.714 --> 00:04:21.113 I'd like to talk a little bit more about the brain, 00:04:21.113 --> 00:04:23.144 because I know you like that here at TED, 00:04:23.144 --> 00:04:26.597 so if you just give me a minute here, okay. 00:04:26.597 --> 00:04:28.603 Okay, let me just say, there's some good news. 00:04:28.603 --> 00:04:31.885 There is some good news. First of all, let me say, 00:04:31.885 --> 00:04:34.212 we've come a long, long way. 00:04:34.212 --> 00:04:38.253 We started off as a teeny, teeny little one-celled amoeba, 00:04:38.253 --> 00:04:42.850 tiny, just sticking onto a rock, and now, voila, the brain. 00:04:42.850 --> 00:04:44.750 Here we go. (Laughter) 00:04:44.750 --> 00:04:47.115 This little baby has a lot of horsepower. 00:04:47.115 --> 00:04:51.538 It comes completely conscious. It's got state-of-the-art lobes. 00:04:51.538 --> 00:04:55.131 We've got the occipital lobe so we can actually see the world. 00:04:55.131 --> 00:04:57.777 We got the temporal lobe so we can actually hear the world. 00:04:57.777 --> 00:04:59.396 Here we've got a little bit of long-term memory, 00:04:59.396 --> 00:05:04.633 so, you know that night you want to forget, when you got really drunk? Bye-bye! Gone. (Laughter) 00:05:04.633 --> 00:05:07.953 So actually, it's filled with 100 billion neurons 00:05:07.953 --> 00:05:11.256 just zizzing away, electrically transmitting information, 00:05:11.256 --> 00:05:13.976 zizzing, zizzing. I'm going to give you a little side view here. 00:05:13.976 --> 00:05:17.568 I don't know if you can get that here. (Laughter) 00:05:17.568 --> 00:05:21.568 So, zizzing away, and so — (Laughter) — 00:05:21.568 --> 00:05:25.257 And for every one — I know, I drew this myself. Thank you. 00:05:25.257 --> 00:05:28.929 For every one single neuron, you can actually have 00:05:28.929 --> 00:05:32.655 from 10,000 to 100,000 different connections 00:05:32.655 --> 00:05:35.917 or dendrites or whatever you want to call it, and every time 00:05:35.917 --> 00:05:38.437 you learn something, or you have an experience, 00:05:38.437 --> 00:05:40.710 that bush grows, you know, that bush of information. 00:05:40.710 --> 00:05:43.664 Can you imagine, every human being is carrying 00:05:43.664 --> 00:05:48.587 that equipment, even Paris Hilton? (Laughter) 00:05:48.587 --> 00:05:50.281 Go figure. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:50.281 --> 00:05:53.765 But I got a little bad news for you folks. I got some bad news. 00:05:53.765 --> 00:05:56.885 This isn't for the one in four. This is for the four in four. 00:05:56.885 --> 00:06:01.065 We are not equipped for the 21st century. 00:06:01.065 --> 00:06:04.814 Evolution did not prepare us for this. We just don't have the bandwidth, 00:06:04.814 --> 00:06:07.397 and for people who say, oh, they're having a nice day, 00:06:07.397 --> 00:06:10.957 they're perfectly fine, they're more insane than the rest of us. 00:06:10.957 --> 00:06:13.481 Because I'll show you where there might be a few glitches 00:06:13.481 --> 00:06:15.925 in evolution. Okay, let me just explain this to you. 00:06:15.925 --> 00:06:19.486 When we were ancient man — (Laughter) — 00:06:19.486 --> 00:06:23.247 millions of years ago, and we suddenly felt threatened 00:06:23.247 --> 00:06:26.949 by a predator, okay? — (Laughter) — 00:06:26.949 --> 00:06:29.897 we would — Thank you. I drew these myself. (Laughter) 00:06:29.897 --> 00:06:33.720 Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause) 00:06:33.720 --> 00:06:37.794 Thank you. Anyway, we would fill up with our own adrenaline 00:06:37.794 --> 00:06:40.412 and our own cortisol, and then we'd kill or be killed, 00:06:40.412 --> 00:06:43.682 we'd eat or we'd be eaten, and then suddenly we'd de-fuel, 00:06:43.682 --> 00:06:45.615 and we'd go back to normal. Okay. 00:06:45.615 --> 00:06:50.897 So the problem is, nowadays, with modern man— (Laughter) — 00:06:50.897 --> 00:06:54.664 when we feel in danger, we still fill up with our own chemical 00:06:54.664 --> 00:06:59.299 but because we can't kill traffic wardens — (Laughter) — 00:06:59.299 --> 00:07:04.096 or eat estate agents, the fuel just stays in our body 00:07:04.096 --> 00:07:06.584 over and over, so we're in a constant state of alarm, 00:07:06.584 --> 00:07:08.317 a constant state. And here's another thing that happened. 00:07:08.317 --> 00:07:11.422 About 150,000 years ago, when language came online, 00:07:11.422 --> 00:07:13.847 we started to put words to this constant emergency, 00:07:13.847 --> 00:07:16.503 so it wasn't just, "Oh my God, there's a saber-toothed tiger," 00:07:16.503 --> 00:07:20.544 which could be, it was suddenly, "Oh my God, I didn't send the email. Oh my God, my thighs are too fat. 00:07:20.544 --> 00:07:24.549 Oh my God, everybody can see I'm stupid. I didn't get invited to the Christmas party!" 00:07:24.549 --> 00:07:27.035 So you've got this nagging loop tape that goes 00:07:27.035 --> 00:07:29.571 over and over again that drives you insane, so, 00:07:29.571 --> 00:07:32.548 you see what the problem is? What once made you safe 00:07:32.548 --> 00:07:34.354 now drives you insane. 00:07:34.354 --> 00:07:37.508 I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but somebody has to be. 00:07:37.508 --> 00:07:43.372 Your pets are happier than you are. (Laughter) 00:07:43.372 --> 00:07:46.268 (Applause) 00:07:46.268 --> 00:07:51.423 So kitty cat, meow, happy happy happy, human beings, screwed. (Laughter) 00:07:51.423 --> 00:07:53.698 Completely and utterly -- so, screwed. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:53.698 --> 00:07:56.157 But my point is, if we don't talk about this stuff, 00:07:56.157 --> 00:07:58.495 and we don't learn how to deal with our lives, it's not going 00:07:58.495 --> 00:08:00.969 to be one in four. It's going to be four in four 00:08:00.969 --> 00:08:04.232 who are really, really going to get ill in the upstairs department. 00:08:04.232 --> 00:08:06.759 And while we're at it, can we please stop the stigma? 00:08:06.759 --> 00:08:13.436 Thank you. (Applause) 00:08:13.436 --> 00:08:24.181 (Applause) Thank you.