in me, in the moon, the the headlines this hour, a chilling effect on media freedom. that's the reaction to a new law proposed by the u. k. government, which could threaten to an investigative journalist with prison debate, exposed state secrets. meanwhile, reporters point out that the property of the un secretary of state planning, he defends independent journalists worldwide, while doing everything to lock up join the funds for the rest of his life. us democratic party mayers prioritize slashing police budgets. although at the same time ramp up spending on their own private security, those are headlines that are on the backend just under an hour's time with another fresh look. you're watching our teacher, national with the

welcome to sophie co visionaries. me sophie shepherd, nonsense. depression is often seen as a score of our time. and today we'll look into how to spot it and raleigh back before it's too late. with dr. assured asian, dr. psychiatrist, founder of the university of california, san francisco, questions center and author of the book when anti depressants aren't enough. soccer, church, ays and ross. i, catherine, founder of the university of california, san francisco depression center. it's great. have you know, program today. welcome. thanks. thanks for having me. so you were a book called one dated precedence or not enough. harnessing the power of mindfulness to alleviate depression. well, always thought of plenty depression,

some sort of a big guns against depression that are needed when all the rest is not enough. am i wrong? and i either presses or you can think of as being big guns, but they're often helpful early in the treatment of somebody with depression. but the trouble is that they're they're not always completely effective for people. so for example, if you take a person who has depression and treat them with an anti depressant at the end of 12 weeks, a 3rd of them will have recovered, but 2 thirds won't recover. and if you've given them those people another m a depressant, another 12 percent of people will recover. so after to have a depression treatments, 50 percent, every cover,

50 percent habit. and for those people that's why really we develop our program to help people with mindfulness base cognitive therapy. well, before we dive deeper into the topic of mindfulness, let's try to deconstruct what is depression. it can be a serious mental problem that has to be treated by professionals. but how does one know that one is feeling not just like you know about common blues, but like a political depression, how do you know that is usually by the depth of the symptoms and the persistence of the sentence? you're quite right. it's normal to have blues in reaction to live stresses at times . but when symptoms, why impaired sleep, impaired ad of appetite seriously depressed mood, suicidal thoughts, negative the persistent negative thoughts occur and the end of these last for

2 weeks or more. then we think of a person as having a major depression or a clinical depression. yes, you something can. can you tell a person is depressed by their last sample or and then mariah brain scan for instance? or is it just the percent percent persistence and depth of the symptoms? actually, there is no blood test for depression. there have been many attempts to try to find that, but there is no blood test. but it is in terms of m r i. if you use a special test called a functional m r i, it measures the brain function, a regular m r i is just like a snapshot of the structures of the but a functional m r i measures how much blood flow is going in certain areas. the

brain and they are, they actually can pinpoint depression because there are typical findings. honor functional m, r i to, i mean we're not like a medical or a scientific program. we're just a program for a wide audience. can you explain in simple words? what is happening in a brain of a depressed person? well, the best way i think, to simply describe it would be that there are certain areas of the brain, the generate emotions, the emotion generating areas. one of them is area called the a meg de la. so if you're depressed at a meg de la is hyper active and there are other areas of the brain that regulate emotion. these are areas like the doors, the lateral prefrontal cortex. it's, it's this area up here. and so normally the emotion

regulation areas of the brain are controlling the emotion regulation areas. but in depression, the emotion generating areas are increased and the regulatory areas are decreased. so what we try to do with treatment, whether it be an anti depressant, treatment or with mindfulness training, is re store this area. so it has primary control. what causes depression? is it like chemicals and to bring that are unbalanced because i don't in my veggies for instance, or is it because life around me? so tough and exhausting, and stressful. and bleak well is probably a combination the people there's a definite genetic bias basis to depression. so that

if your mother or father, brother and sister, if they have depression, you're probably at higher risk. porch, inadequate. and then as you take a certain life stressors that occur, they may activate their genetic basis. so you develop depression. so it's really a combination of the year genetics and why stressors. yeah, i've often read in many scientific papers that women are believed to be affected by depression, much more than men and some studies and suggests that i think one 3rd of all women experience at least one depressive episode during their lifetime. why it's female psychology to be blamed for this and fairness or do women statistically have more reasons to worry during their lifetime? why is it?

well, that's a good question. and we don't know all the answers to that, but it's, it's definitely true that in studies of depression, women, our number man significantly. and it may relate to a number of factors or hormonal bases. in a woman is different. they may be more subject to certain life stressors than men are. and that man may for whatever reason, perhaps genetics tend to react to stress somewhat differently. so or so a woman might get depressed in this situation. whereas a man might turn to substance abuse to alcohol, for example. well, i came up also across several studies that suggest that people with higher i q are more prone to mental disorders, including depression, anxiety,

do you see connection there? because we often see very bright, very talented people taking their lives. after a long depression. what do you say to that? how can you explain it? well, i'm not sure if there's a really good correlation between somebody's i, q and depression levels. depression is an equal opportunity. illness, it really affects people across different social classes and, and i q is mean an, any given day in the world, there's over a 100000000 cases of depression throughout the world. so it's a very wide spread illness. and it affects people across the board if depression hits and then it seems to be ok and you get over 8. what are the

chances that it will actually come back one day? unfortunately, the chances are pretty good. it'll come back. it tends to be a recurring illness. that's why depression is the number one cause of disability in the world. because it tends to occur initially in a person's younger ages, like when they're in their twenties. and that it recurs over their lifetime. so the chance if you have an episode of depression, the chance that you're going to have another episode in the next 10 years is about 20 percent. if you have 2 episodes, the chance that you're going to have another episode goes up to 50 percent. and if you have 3 episodes, the chances are 90 percent that you're going to have another episode. yeah, i have this very famous and popular psychologist in russia and

he's pretty radical and he believes, and he's told me was that you know everyone after 65, pretty much everyone should be put on antidepressants because their, her model changes are so drastic that if you don't do that, they will struggle until the end of the lives. what do you say through that kind of radical approach to people after 65 should put, should be put on some sort of antidepressant. why i would disagree with that. i mean, am i, depressants are, are very helpful for many people, but they're, you know, they're not without side effects and risks of their own. so, and most people over 65 don't get depressed is common. and it is a problem when it occurs, but most people are not going to get depressed. so again, take a short break right now when we're back. we'll continue talking to dr. steward isn't drugs. i patrick, founder of the university of california,

san francisco depression center. talking about into depressants, they were the the the the the, the, whatever, the

the the, the news. ah, so what we try to do is really to leverage on the knowledge of this partners from developed countries. and they offer field church services support. but it was so this is sort of a broker 12 things from developing and emerging countries to get access to space because clearly one of the issues,

one of the show stoppers is the cost of the launch in the operation the o. right now there are 2000000000 people who are overweight or obese. it's possible to sell food that is 20 and sugary and faulty and addicted. not at the individual level. it's not individual willpower. and if we go on believing that will never change as obesity epidemic, that industry has been influencing very deeply. the medical and scientific establishment, ah, what driving the its corporate me . ah

ah. and we're back with dr. steward, ethan ross. i patrick, founder of the university of california, san francisco depression center talking about into the presence substrate and route . you said that mindfulness is a great help against depression, but when you say mindfulness, what exactly do you mean by that? well, mindfulness is being aware of your experience as you're experiencing it. so for example, it may be that you're as you're walking down the street, you're aware of this and stations in your feet as you're walking down the street. or as you're sitting in a chair breathing, you're aware of the sensations of the breath moving in and out as you're breathing

. so it's being aware in the present moment of whatever your experience has and accepting it without any judgment or criticism. so you're saying basically when you're depressed and you're faring terrible and you don't want to get bad, you know what, you don't want to wash your hair, you know, want to eat, just accept that state of being and what analyze it or do what would that isn't like double torture? no. not exactly. for example, if somebody's depressed what they're often involved with and their thinking is the past or the future in the past, they think that they, they feel as if they've experienced a loss. whether they actually have experienced a loss or not, they're, they're tied up in their thinking about it, and regrets and ruminations about it. and on the other hand,

there may be anxious components where they're worried about the future. so they're focused on the past or on the present. i actually focused on the past or on the future, and they're not focused on the present moment. and in mindfulness, we train them to be focused on the present moment. so if you're focused on your breath, for example, you're not thinking about past regrets or about future disasters that are looming for you or you. but usually i'm so sorry for interrupting. but usually when someone is not usually, but in many cases when someone experiences depression for instance it's, it's caused by certain loss like a very painful break up. or you've lost a person that you loved so much to call that. i've had many people like that around me and they're depressed now because they're longing for the past or thinking about the future because it heard that the person that you loved the most is next to

anymore. it's actually a very present thing. what do you do with that and mindfulness? well, 1st of all, we'd have to say house how severe and persistent the symptoms are. if the person is having a normal grief response, then that is normal. mean when you lose a loved one, it's normal to feel sadness, but depression is something different than normal, grave one, there's different ways of differentiating it. but, but for example, the person who is, if you look at their self esteem, you get an idea. for example, if you ask a depressed person, how do you feel about yourself after the loss of a loved one? the depressed person says, i feel bad, i'm

a bad person. i should have done more. i should have done this or that would have saved this person and i'm a rotten person. if you ask a person who's in normal grief and is sad about the loss, but it's not depressed. if you ask them how they feel, how do you feel about yourself? they'll say i feel ok about myself. and just that i have the sadness about the last experience. so the differentiation can be done by the self esteem, the person as depressed as low self esteem, and the person who is having normal grief still has intact self esteem. ok, so how does mindfulness work in terms of dosage? for instance, for instance, we know how antidepressants work, right? on a chemical level, there are pharmaceutical product. but a dose of mindfulness, cognitive therapy isn't quite a pill. how does that work?

or we teach people to be more mindful using this approach. and it helps them become more aware of the present moment and less concerned about the past or the future. and how it works actually, is it isn't just smoke and mirrors. it actually affects the brain function. so for example, if we do a functional m r i of people getting trained in mindfulness based cognitive therapy . we find that this area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is diminished and depression, tends to come back up to normal levels. and those areas of the brain involved in emotion generation like the a may de la, tend to go down, so from being hyperactive back down to normal levels. so mindfulness actually reverses the,

the problem in the brain that depression has associated with the dose of mindfulness. that's a good question you raise. nobody knows exactly what the right door says. whether you need to practice mindfulness for 10 minutes a day, or 30 minutes a day or 24 minutes a day. it isn't clear what the doors says. we found people who practiced even 10 minutes a day ah, receive benefit. so the doors still has to be worked out exactly as not as, you know, as simple as taking a medication where you take this dose or that dose but mindfulness, even in small doses. house the person restore that normal balance in the brain. have you had many cases where a person is really just like, motionless, lying on bat, looking at the wall. and then the mindfulness practice has completely cured him.

because i'm thinking maybe mindfulness plus onto depressing because i can't imagine like that person. and you know, he's just like they're like his own me and you like why don't you try mindfulness meditate a little bit. i mean, do you know what i mean? that's a good question. if you're talking about somebody who's so flattened out by depression, they're just staying in bed. it probably would be hard to teach them mindfulness. but on the other hand, in our research for people who have what we call treatment resistant depression, meaning they fail to recover just by 2 or more. and i did present trials. we took people who were on any depression and taught them mindfulness techniques as an outpatient. they weren't in bad, but they came into sessions for 8 weeks. and we found in those people, they had had depression episodes lasting on average for 7 years. and we were able

to teach those people on an outpatient basis, how to practice mindfulness, and in that they became much less depressed and recovered and in many instances went into remission. so you can teach people who are pretty seriously depressed, not completely bedridden by depression, but, but sort of just above they have level to learn how to become more mindful. so you also say it is important to be aware that the way 1 may feel about the situation doesn't really reflect what the situation really is. but then how do we know what the situation really is? if the only way we can perceive it is to have subjective feelings about it, mindfulness helps give you a little bit of distance between the, the stimulus and your response to it. so for example,

a young woman who was out on a date with a boy, a guy who's sitting at the dining room table. and the guy looks down at his, his phone to look for a message at during the dinner. and if she is depressed, she might say to herself, oh he is bored with me and i am going to get rejected it. with the mindfulness approach, we tend to help the person gain some distance from those kinds of thoughts. so if she has their thought, he's bored with me. well,

give them some opportunity to say, that's just a thought. it's not a fact. she doesn't know that he is bored with her. it's just a depressive thought that she's having. and then can she come up with an alternative thought? well, maybe he's expecting an important message or something and it doesn't necessarily mean that he's bored with me. the next thought that's arise is like maybe his sex and the woman. i'm kidding. here's an alternative. i'm kidding. alright, mindfulness talks a lot about being in the present moment. like you've emphasized and i know what that means actually, because you know, you're upset your last and worthless. you're let everyone down. you feel tired, exhausted, stress. you'll never get an oscar level of law and then you look at trees for like 2 minutes and you know, everything just seems better. everything's not that bad anymore. but then what if your present moment is not green trees that can surround you or like

a peaceful environment, but 5 hungry kids know job rep and then outside, where do i get the resource out of that kind of a right environment out of that kind of a present moment. do you know what i mean? well, not exactly. in terms of, you know, if, if you're if your environment is, is so negative. i mean, that may be the reality of your, of your environment at that time. i mean, mindfulness doesn't sugar coat things, it helps you see things as they are. so you may view a situation from this angle or from this angle. and the difficulty with depression is you tend to view things from a negative viewpoint. i mean, there are certain thoughts and depression which are though common depressive

thoughts. i know good things will never get better. things are going to get worse. in fact, i'm not as good as my neighbor and not as good as the person is sitting next to me . all kinds of negative thoughts. and what mindfulness does is helps you, james, some distance from those sites is what we call the centering from those sides. so you can choose whether or not you want to believe those thoughts or nat, or, or recognize their just thoughts. what i like to think of it as is if with mindfulness is it's like you're walking down a street in a town and in the store, windows are negative thoughts in depression, you tend to go into the store and buy those thoughts and take them home as if they're years in mindfulness, you walk down the street,

you still see the sort storefronts with the negative ross, but you don't go in and buy those thoughts. you can see that they don't disappear, but you don't have to take them out as if they're a pure fact professor, it's been really interesting talking to you and thank you so much for this wonderful insight into mindfulness. good luck with everything and i hope we meet again. ok. nice talking with you can if you're interested my website, stewart, eyes and graph that com has more information about it. and it also has some meditate, mindfulness meditations, that are free on an audio link. there after we get a little practice. thank you so much. ok. nice talking to a great day professor. thank you. bye bye. the

ah. ah, ah, ah, ah ah, ah ah . ah, the democratic dominated select committee investigating the events of january 6 on capitol hill has been constituted and will start proceedings next week. will it be merely political theatre, a proverbial lunch room? food fight on national display?

one thing is for sure these proceedings will reflect deep political divisions. fagley finding the truth looks to be of secondary importance. ah, me, eastern half of the united states, we're going to have billions, if not trillions of periodical cicada is interacting with tens of millions of human beings in their back yard. oh my god. obviously some of the cicadas do not have very high tolerance for alcohol because they are already passing out for 6 minutes. 400.