end quote. that from the president of the united states. that's going to do it for me for now. i'm fredricka whitfield in atlanta. the cnn "newsroom" continues 30 minutes from now. our coverage of flight 370 continues right now with sanjay gupta, m.d. for a full month now, the world has been watching and waiting and wondering trying to figure out what happened to malaysia airline flight 370. you know, for most of us watching this on television, it's been an interesting mystery, but for the families of those on board, it's been this agonizing period of uncertainty with emotions fluctuating from tremendous hope to awful desp r despair. it's a different sort of suffering. few people know more about coping with the sort of grief than psychologist charles verson. thank you for coming back to the program. >> glad to be here. >> we've talked about different things over the years.

this sort of situation where you have this period of hope where the world seemingly is searching for your loved ones and they're on your side, in your corner, and then to go from that to despair, is that worse than never having had the hope in the first place? >> yeah, probably. you know, there's some interesting scientific evidence that suggests that. they did a study a number of years ago where they looked at people's immune system by whether they were hopeful in the face of stressors or sort of negative, the kind of people that would expect the worst and they found that hopeful people had better immune responses than people that were sort of more pessimistic except when the hopeful people's hope got dashed. they had a huge change where their immune system essentially collapsed. so we have some pretty good evidence that it is -- that false hope is probably worse than no hope at all, yeah. >> it's fascinating. again, it's under such tragic

circumstances we're even talking about this. but this idea that there still isn't closure, doctor, and, you know, if you listen to the various analysis, there may not be closure for a long time, if ever. >> yeah. >> the hard core evidence. what about that situation? if there's never closure. there's always this lingering hope. >> right. so, you know, there's three things that set people up to develop mental disturbances after trauma. one is if the trauma is unexpected. the other is if it's uncontrollable. and the final one is if it's unresolved. and, you know, the horrible thing about this malaysian airline thing, of course, is it hits all three of those big time, and so this unresolved nature of it, it just -- this is why people are so desperate to get prisoner of war bodies back and things like this. closure, even if it's painful, helps people go on, and a lack of closure, you know, it eats away at people, so, yes, this is just an unbelievably cruel twist

to this whole story, that these people are having to experience this up and this down in the sense that, you know, either there may be hope -- the question of false hope and then also just the fact that nobody knows. it's so bizarre, and that in itself is so unusual. usually at least you can say we know in general what happened. this is the first one of these i think in my lifetime that's been so not closed. >> what about the physical impact? you know, you say there's a higher concordance with mental disturbances after something like this especially if you have those various ingredients, but what about just physically? >> oh, yeah. stress is a killer. it's a huge killer, right? so there are literally hundreds and hundreds of studies showing if you look at things like earthquakes or 9/11s or things like this, death rates spike. they spike acutely. people literally drop dead from heart attacks at a rate six, eight, ten, 12 times higher than

the regular rate, and then if you look at traumas and look at their long-term sequelae in years afterwards, they have done this in oklahoma city, francor instance. >> some of this is jarring to hear but sort of we know this to be true. the connection between the mind and what's happening there and our body. >> in terms of what to do for these people, different people need different things, and i know you and i have talked about this in the past, but i think the general rule is the best way to help people that have gone through something like this is to try to understand each individual and how they've reacted to it and try to tailor one's treatment, one's help to that person's way of coping. you know, what you're looking for is that you don't expect these people to be happy. you expect them to be heart broken, but you don't want to see them ceasing to function. you don't want to see them

beginning to wish they were dead or becoming fixated on their own pain and they begin to unwind. the treatment for people, although there are some general rules, it very much depends on supporting people and helping them build up the ways of coping that they themselves naturally have, and that varies from person to person. >> dr. raison, thank you for being with us. you're the best in the business. we always appreciate having you on. >> great, sanjay, it was great to talk to you as always. >> thank you, sir. up next, an all too familiar seen in ft. hood, texas. i will talk to a marine captain who himself suffers from post-traumatic stress, along with the president of the american psychiatric association. (little girl) no! saw her first day of school. (little girl) bye bye! made a best friend forever. the back seat of my subaru is where she grew up. what? (announcer) the 2015 subaru forester (girl) what? (announcer) built to be there for your family.

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not even five years now after the worst shooting at an american military base it happened again this week at ft. hood in texas. as you probably know by now, ivan lopez, a 34-year-old specialist, he had served four months in iraq and was back now stateside undergoing treatment for mental health issues. on wednesday he opened fire on his fellow servicemen and women. when you think about something like this, can there ever be a satisfactory explanation as to why something like this happened? it doesn't need to happen. it shouldn't happen. we know that. we want to talk about it a little bit today. retired captain james hague of the u.s. marine corps is with us and in new york is dr. jeffrey lieberman, president of the american psychiatric association. thank you both for joining us. captain, let me start with you. you were deployed yourself three times. you say that you came back to

your family a different man, that you had post-traumatic stress. when you hear the news of this week, what is your first thought? >> my first thought is what could we have done to help him more? why did the system fail? why did he give up hope? because we needed to do so much more to help our veterans now. there are so many programs out there other than just the mental health system in the va. there were so many things that are still out there, other nonprofit organizations, other things that are out there that can be done to help these soldiers and these veterans. >> you know, captain, i think that is the most salient point. you know, did something fail him? how difficult is it to get the help that you need? you went through this yourself. i mean, it's something you've talked about openly. you were able to get help.

why did it work for you when it doesn't seem to work for so many others? >> i'll be completely honest with you. it took me almost 12 years to realize that i needed help. i went through three tours overseas before i realized that i needed help. it takes a very, very strong person to realize that they need help within themselves. it took my wife and my friends to tell me that i needed help. it took my wife telling me she was going to leave me before i needed to get help. so obviously something failed in the system because it took my wife to do that. >> you know, what we know about him so far is he seemed like somebody that you wouldn't look at and say, there is a problem looming here. he said hello, he was friendly to people, he had moved into a new place with his wife and his daughter. i'm sorry, doctor, first to you, is there always some sign? are there risk factors that people missed? >> very likely, yes. i mean, when we saw the incident

with aaron alexis which is a very different case, that was not ptsd. that was clearly ski lly schizo or psychosis. there were many signs that were missed and not acted on. in this case by the accounts we heard, it's not clear that this person had any signs of being very severely mentally ill or prone to violence, but as you point out, he had had some changes lately. from what i read in the news, he had the loss of a grandmother and a mother recently in puerto rico, and he was grieving them. he had moved from where he previously was stationed back to ft. hood and was re-establishing a new location. plus the fact he may have had the remnants of the ptsd that may have been induced initially during his tour of duty in iraq. >> some of these stats are just really -- they're awful, and they're unimaginable, a veter veteran's worst wounds are often the ones we don't see at all.

in 2012 we know more men and women died by suicide than by combat. 20% of all suicides that are happening are veterans. doctor, when you hear stats like that, is there something we have failed to do -- you know you talk about mental health checkups, regular screening. is there something else that we said this could make a huge difference and we have just not done it? >> absolutely. first of all, our society, our country overall, not just in the military, has really failed to try and provide what would be evidence-based public health worthy mental health services for people, and we see the problem with the homeless, with the mentally ill who are in jails and the periodic mass violent incidents occurring as a result. in the military, the problem is compounded and more concentrated and are producing these massive statistics of ptsd, of more combatant and more soldiers

dying by suicide than enemy combatants. health care needs to be moved to the front as if you're having an epidemic because of salmonella or e. coli or there was some toxin in the air. you would be acting on it immediately. we're having this with mental illness related complications and we should be doing that. >> jason, let me end on a more positive note, something i have been very interested in, and you obviously it has changed your life. you're on the board of directors of a group called k-9s for warriors. >> the 32 different medications when i was at my darkest point, i found k-9s for warriors and i got my service dog, axel, who is sitting right here beside me and i take him everywhere. if i didn't have him, i guarantee you i wouldn't be sitting here today. i would be dead. i would have overdosed on one of those 32 different medications,

drank myself to death, or ultimately would have become a statistic and committed suicide. we provide service dogs to wounded veterans with ptsd, traumatic brain injury, or amputees. we've provided 117 now to veterans throughout the country. we've had no suicides. we've had no suicide attempts. what he does for me is my marines watch my back when i was overseas. when i came back home, like i said, you can't turn that switch off, and he is what is able for my brain to relax because he is technically watching my back. he can do all other types of things. when i start to have a panic attack, when i start to have an anxiety attack, he senses that and he's able to lead me out of that situation. he also wakes me up from my night tremors, my night terrors. he can bring me my medicine. he can find my keys. he can find my wallet because of

my traumatic brain injury. they can do anything that we need them to. we will tailor them to the specific needs of that veteran. >> i'm glad you're doing well. i'm glad you found something that can help. there are a lot of people obviously as we're all saying that need to find that help as well. captain, thank you so much for joining us, and dr. lieberman, thanks for coming back on the program. >> thank you they have. there's supposed to be a safer alternative to smoking. some people say e cigarettes have helped them quick. but poison control issued a major warning about them this week. i'll tell you all about it. that's next. on time. ♪ tracks! they connect the factories built along the lines. and that means jobs, lots of people, making lots and lots of things. let's get your business rolling now, everybody sing. ♪ norfolk southern what's your function? ♪ ♪ helping this big country move ahead as one ♪ ♪ norfolk southern how's that function? ♪

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the american association of poison control centers issued this stern warning on tuesday. the group reports a surge in calls about exposures to e cigarettes and also the liquid nicotine they contain. we asked elizabeth cohen to look into this. >> reporter: nicotine, it's a poison, and when it's liquefied, it's a highly concentrated poison. wren learned that the hard way when we are 4-year-old son got into liquid nicotine used to refill e cigarettes. >> hear a little bit of a noise, come in, and he's taken the lid off all of them and has this liquid everywhere. he's been eating it. >> reporter: his son vomited all day long and was rushed to the emergency room. calls to poison centers involving e cigarettes have surged. 215 in february alone. just 3 1/2 years ago, calls

averaged only one per month. the centers for disease control says the liquids in flavors like mellon and strawberry look and smell like candy. so one mouthful of this for a child is like eating -- >> that's like eating four or five cigarettes. that could be lethal. >> reporter: and you don't even have to swallow it to get sick. >> you have gotten calls from people while they're filling this thing up, it spills on their skin, and they start to feel sick. >> you can start feeling sick in as little as four to five minutes. >> reporter: a spokesman for e cigarette makers say they want child proof packaging and warning labels and they're working with regulators but he puts some of the safety burden on consumers, too. this is an adult product and should be treated as such, he wrote. responsible behavior should be promoted and endorsed. the centers for disease control all these liquids a threat. poison experts say bottles can spill, cartridges can break, and little hands can get into this highly concentrated poison.

elizabeth cohen, cnn, atlanta. >> how do you define success? is it money, is it power? arianna huffington will stop by with what she calls a third metric of success.

seven years ago this weekend my next guest found herself lying on the floor of her home office in a pool of her own

blood. she had collapsed from exhaustion, and this served as a wake-up call for her. ariana huffington and she's the woman behind "the huffington post" as well as the author of a new book called thrive. let me ask you something that may seem like a bit of a nonintuitive question, and you and i are -- you know, we both have an immigrant mentality i feel, but how important is happiness? don't take that on face value as a question, but is some degree of misery important for success? >> i don't believe that at all. i feel that what -- obviously every life has challenges, obstacles, even the most blessed one, but what you call misery often comes from our own thoughts. it comes from our own negative fantasies about the future. it doesn't come necessarily from what is happening but from what we think about what may happen or from the judgments that we have about what did happen.

so that's why the book as well as talking about the third metric of success beyond money and power is very much about how do we connect with ourselves? how do we get to know ourselves and have some control of our own inner environment and our own reactions to what is happening in our lives. >> people who are workaholics, when i talk to them, ariana, they tell me often times that not only do i think that this is a good thing for me, i wouldn't be able to function well unless i was working as hard and as often as i do. they seem to derive legitimate, genuine joy from working that hard. what do you say to those people? >> well, i totally get that, i'm a workaholic and i derive a lot of joy from my work. that's completely different from not giving ourselves and our bodies time to renew and regenerate. as you know, as a doctor, the

healing process is really this balance between the damage process that goes on throughout life and the restorative, the regeneration process, and if the damage process is really the one that dominates, disease follows. and right now we have the evidence to prove it. you know, 75% of american health care costs are because of chronic preventable stress-related diseases. >> i want to ask you about this quote, which i love this quote. as a dad, as a doctor, as a journalist, it's this quote, how did it get so late so soon? it's not before it's afternoon. december is here before it is june. my goodness, how time has flewn. >> dr. seuss, of course. dr. seuss addressing what has become known as time famine. the time deficit we all feel,

and there's all these surveys that show people want time in their lives more than they want anything else. so that's where it really comes down to what we value in our lives, and, you know, in my epilogue, i say we have 30,000 days to live the game of life if we're lucky and how we live it depend on what we value. our eulogies will not be our resum resumes. if we only value money and power, we will end up feeling we never have enough and that we are always going to be breathlessly out of time because there is never enough time to just make our lives about those two metrics. but if you can include the other four elements i write about, you know, our well-being, our capacity for wisdom, for wonder, and for giving, then our lives are truly transformed. >> look, it's a pleasure. i'm a fan of yours. i hope you can stay diligent to these really, really worthwhile

goals, right? again, i think about these things a lot. i wish, frankly, i implemented them better but i'm going to try more because of you and i appreciate that. >> thank you so much. and i tree them better because of you. thank you. we need to support each other. >> that will wrap things up. time to get you back in the cnn "newsroom" with brianna keilar. you are in the cnn "newsroom." i'm brianna keilar in for don lemon. and a couple potentially major developments are injecting new energy into the search for the malaysian airliner that vanished just over four weeks ago in the indian ocean. today a chinese search crew picked up a minute and a half of pings on the exact frequency used by emergency beacons attached to airplane flight data recorders. now, nothing is confirmed, and so far nothing links these pings to flight 370 but the pulses were reportedly defected near the