I worked as a war reporter for 15 years before I realized that I really had a problem.
做了十五年战地记者后，我才意识到自己出了问题。
There was something really wrong with me.
我整个人都不对劲。
This was about a year before 9/11, and America wasn't at war yet.
这事大概发生在9/11事件前一年，当时美国还没处于战乱中。
We weren't talking about PTSD. We were not yet talking about the effect of trauma and war on the human psyche.
人们尚未谈及PTSD。也未提及伤痛和战争给人带来的心灵创伤。
I'd been in Afghanistan for a couple of months with the Northern Alliance as they were fighting the Taliban.
我同北部联盟在阿富汗待过几个月，正值阿富汗与塔利班交战。
And at that point the Taliban had an air force, they had fighter planes, they had tanks, they had artillery,
当时，塔利班有一支空军部队。他们还有战斗机、坦克和大炮，
and we really got hammered pretty badly a couple of times. We saw some very ugly things.
有好几次，我们着实遭到了重创。也目睹过一些恶劣行径。
But I didn't really think it affected me. I didn't think much about it.
但我确实没想过这事会影响到我。我没怎么去想过它。
I came home to New York, where I live. Then one day I went down into the subway, and for the first time in my life, I knew real fear.
我返回纽约，回到居所。然后有天我走进地铁，这辈子我第一次感受到了真正的恐惧。
I had a massive panic attack. I was way more scared than I had ever been in Afghanistan.
莫大的恐慌向我袭来，我可比当时在阿富汗要来得惶恐得多。
Everything I was looking at seemed like it was going to kill me, but I couldn't explain why.
眼前所见的一切似乎都想要我的命，但我不能解释为何。
The trains were going too fast. There were too many people. The lights were too bright.
列车开得飞快。周围太多人。灯光过于亮。
Everything was too loud, everything was moving too quickly.
万物喧闹着、飞快晃动着。
I backed up against a support column and just waited for it.
我靠在一根支柱边，就只是静待其变。
When I couldn't take it any longer, I ran out of the subway station and walked wherever I was going.
在自己忍无可忍之时，我冲出地铁站，像只没头苍蝇一通瞎走。
Later, I found out that what I had was short-term PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder.
之后我才知晓，当时自己患上的是短期PTSD--也就是“战后孤独感症候群”。
We evolved as animals, as primates, to survive periods of danger,
我们从动物、人猿演化而来，在危险情境中生存了下来，
and if your life has been in danger, you want to react to unfamiliar noises.
如果你的生命处于危险的情境当中，你会想对不熟悉的噪音作出反应。
You want to sleep lightly, wake up easily.
你会浅眠，而且很容易惊醒。
You want to have nightmares and flashbacks of the thing that could kill you.
你就会做噩梦并回忆起那些差点把你杀掉的事情。
You want to be angry because it makes you predisposed to fight, or depressed,
你会变得很生气，因为它会让你进入准备战斗的状态，或者变得绝望，
because it keeps you out of circulation a little bit. Keeps you safe.
因为它会让你有点喘不过气来，你会想随时保持自己的安全。
It's not very pleasant, but it's better than getting eaten.
这并不令人愉快，但比被恐惧吞噬来得好。
Most people recover from that pretty quickly. It takes a few weeks, a few months.
大多数人能很快走出这个阴影。大概需要几个星期或是几个月。
I kept having panic attacks, but they eventually went away.
我一直经历着这种痛苦的打击，但我最后还是康复了。
I had no idea it was connected to the war that I'd seen.
我不知道这和自己目睹过的战乱有所相连。
I just thought I was going crazy, and then I thought, well, now I'm not going crazy anymore.
我只觉得自己要疯了，之后我想，好吧，现在我再也不会发疯了。
About 20 percent of people, however, wind up with chronic, long-term PTSD.
然而，大约有20%的人，最后演变成慢性、长期的PTSD。
They are not adapted to temporary danger. They are maladapted for everyday life, unless they get help.
他们不是要去面对短期的危险，而是不能适应日常的生活，除非有人能帮他们一把。
We know that the people who are vulnerable to long-term PTSD are people who were abused as children,
我们都知道那些容易转变为长期PTSD的人，这些人也许是童年时蒙受过非人虐待、
who suffered trauma as children, people who have low education levels, people who have psychiatric disorders in their family.
也许是年幼时遭到精神创伤、也许是没有受过高等教育的人，也许是有精神病的家庭遗传。
If you served in Vietnam and your brother is schizophrenic, you're way more likely to get long-term PTSD from Vietnam.
如果你曾在越南服役，而你的兄弟是精神分裂病患者，你很有可能因越南的经历而患上PTSD。
So I started to study this as a journalist, and I realized that there was something really strange going on.
因此我开始以记者的身份来对这个问题进行调查研究，并且意识到确实这其中有所异常。
The numbers seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
“人数”似乎朝着错误的方向不断发展。
Every war that we have fought as a country, starting with the Civil War, the intensity of the combat has gone down.
每一次我们国家参与的战争，从独立战争开始，战争的强度开始下降。
As a result, the casualty rates have gone down. But disability rates have gone up.
所以，伤亡率也开始下降。但伤残率却开始上升。
They should be going in the same direction, but they're going in different directions.
它们本该是朝同一方向进发，却走上了截然不同的道路。
The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced, thank God, a casualty rate about one third of what it was in Vietnam.
感谢上帝，最近在伊拉克和阿富汗的战争仅造成越南战争伤亡率的三分之一。
But they've also created -- they've also produced three times the disability rates.
但是，它们也导致了多达三倍的伤残率。
Around 10 percent of the US military is actively engaged in combat, 10 percent or under.
将近有10%的美国军人经历过战场，或者说是10%以下。
They're shooting at people, killing people, getting shot at, seeing their friends get killed.
他们在战场上开枪、杀人、中弹、或者看着他们的战友倒下。
It's incredibly traumatic. But it's only about 10 percent of our military.
这简直是莫大的精神创伤。这仅仅是10%的军人。
But about half of our military has filed for some kind of PTSD compensation from the government.
然而从政府的档案中，我们看到有一半的军人正在领取PTSD的救济金。
And suicide doesn't even fit into this in a very logical way.
从逻辑看来，自杀人数根本不符合这个数据。
We've all heard the tragic statistic of 22 vets a day, on average, in this country, killing themselves.
我们都听说过一个不幸的统计数据，平均每天有22个退伍军人，就在这个国家，选择自杀。
Most people don't realize that the majority of those suicides are veterans of the Vietnam War, that generation,
大部分人还没发觉这些自杀案例大多数是从越南战争回国的老兵，在那一个年代，
and their decision to take their own lives actually might not be related to the war they fought 50 years earlier.
他们想要自我了断的决定，事实上或许与那场50年前的战争无关。
In fact, there's no statistical connection between combat and suicide.
实际上，目前没有战争与自杀是有关连性的统计数据。
If you're in the military and you're in a lot of combat, you're no more likely to kill yourself than if you weren't.
假如你在军队中参与过很多场战役，你更不会倾向于选择自杀。
In fact, one study found that if you deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, you're actually slightly less likely to commit suicide later.
一项研究显示，假如你参与过伊拉克或者阿富汗战争，其实你是更不可能在往后选择自杀的。
I studied anthropology in college. I did my fieldwork on the Navajo reservation.
我在大学时期研究人类学，到那瓦侯保护区做过实地调查。
I wrote a thesis on Navajo long-distance runners. And recently, while I was researching PTSD, I had this thought.
我写过当地长跑运动员的相关论文。而最近，在我研究PTSD时，突然有了这样的想法。
I thought back to the work I did when I was young, and I thought, I bet the Navajo, the Apache, the Comanche
我想起我年轻时做过的研究，我在想，我敢说那瓦侯人、阿帕切人、科曼奇人，
I mean, these are very warlike nations -- I bet they weren't getting PTSD like we do.
我的意思是，这些好战的民族，我打赌他们不像我们这样会患上PTSD。

When their warriors came back from fighting the US military or fighting each other,
当他们的战士从抵抗美国军队的战争中回到家乡，或者从部落之间的互斗中归来时，
I bet they pretty much just slipped right back into tribal life.
我敢说他们肯定很容易就重新融入部落生活。
And maybe what determines the rate of long-term PTSD isn't what happened out there, but the kind of society you come back to.
也许，决定长期PTSD的因素，不是在战场上发生了什么，而是你回到了什么样的社会。
And maybe if you come back to a close, cohesive, tribal society, you can get over trauma pretty quickly.
要是回到一个紧密联系的、团结的、部落化的社会，你能很快度过创伤期。
And if you come back to an alienating, modern society, you might remain traumatized your entire life.
但假如你回到的是一个人与人疏远的现代社会，或许会以郁郁终生结尾。
In other words, maybe the problem isn't them, the vets; maybe the problem is us.
换句话来说，也许问题不出在他们、那些退伍军人身上；而有可能是我们社会自身的问题。
Certainly, modern society is hard on the human psyche by every metric that we have.
的确，现代社会对人类的精神带来了重大的压力，这些压力来自于我们社会上各种的衡量标准。
As wealth goes up in a society, the suicide rate goes up instead of down. If you live in modern society,
随着社会财富积累，自杀率不减反增。如果你生活在现代社会中，
you're up to eight times more likely to suffer from depression in your lifetime than if you live in a poor, agrarian society.
假如你生活在现代社会，你患上抑郁症的可能性，相比于你在贫穷的农业社会生活要高八倍。
Modern society has probably produced the highest rates of suicide and depression and anxiety and loneliness and child abuse ever in human history.
现代社会也许产生了最高的自杀率、抑郁症、焦虑症、孤僻症和受到童年虐待的可能，这比例要比历史任一时代都高。
I saw one study that compared women in Nigeria,
我看过一个研究，它把奈吉利亚的妇女，
one of the most chaotic and violent and corrupt and poorest countries in Africa, to women in North America.
也就是非洲最混乱、最暴力、最腐败、最贫穷的国家之一，和北美的女性进行比较。
And the highest rates of depression were urban women in North America. That was also the wealthiest group.
北美的城市女性是忧郁症患病率最高的。她们也是最富裕的群体。
So let's go back to the US military. Ten percent are in combat.
我们回头来看美军的状况。10%的军人经历过战争。
Around 50 percent have filed for PTSD compensation.
这里面有将近50%的军人登记领取PTSD的补偿。
So about 40 percent of veterans really were not traumatized overseas but have come home to discover they are dangerously alienated and depressed.
所以大概40%的退休军人并不是在海外受到精神创伤，而是回到家后，发现他们被孤立并感到沮丧绝望。
So what is happening with them?
那么他们遭遇了什么？
What's going on with those people, the phantom 40 percent that are troubled but don't understand why?
在他们身上究竟发生了什么，我们让40%的人患上PTSD，却不清楚成因？
Maybe it's this: maybe they had an experience of sort of tribal closeness in their unit when they were overseas.
也许是这样的：也许当时他们在海外，经历过部队亲密的战友关系。
They were eating together, sleeping together, doing tasks and missions together.
他们一起吃饭、一起睡觉、一起完成任务。
They were trusting each other with their lives.
他们以生命维护彼此的信任。
And then they come home and they have to give all that up and they're coming back to a society, a modern society,
当他们回到家，他们必须舍弃战场上的所有情谊，他们回到社会，这个现代社会，
which is hard on people who weren't even in the military. It's just hard on everybody.
这个即使没有入过伍的人都觉得艰难的社会。所有人在这社会都活得艰苦。
And we keep focusing on trauma, PTSD. But for a lot of these people, maybe it's not trauma.
而我们却一直关注精神创伤、PTSD。但对大部分人来说，也许这不是精神创伤。
I mean, certainly, soldiers are traumatized and the ones who are have to be treated for that.
我的意思是，士兵的确是受过精神创伤，也有士兵接受过治疗。
But a lot of them -- maybe what's bothering them is actually a kind of alienation.
但他们中的很多人--也许困扰他们的只是一种隔离感。
I mean, maybe we just have the wrong word for some of it, and just changing our language, our understanding, would help a little bit.
我的意思是，也许我们只是错用了词语去形容他们，只要改变我们的语言、我们的认知，就能帮助改变现状。
"Post-deployment alienation disorder." Maybe even just calling it that for some of these people
“战后孤独感症候群”，也许只要这样称呼，他们其中的一部分人，
would allow them to stop imagining trying to imagine a trauma that didn't really happen in order to explain a feeling that really is happening.
就能帮助他们停止联想一个根本没有发生过的创伤，这是为了解释一种他们正在经历的感受。
And in fact, it's an extremely dangerous feeling. That alienation and depression can lead to suicide.
而事实上，这是一种非常危险的感觉。隔离感和抑郁会导致自杀。
These people are in danger. It's very important to understand why.
这些人正处于危险中。了解成因是非常重要的事情。
The Israeli military has a PTSD rate of around one percent.
以色列军队的PTSD比例在1%左右。
The theory is that everyone in Israel is supposed to serve in the military.
有一种理论是说，因为以色列的所有人都需要服兵役。
When soldiers come back from the front line, they're not going from a military environment to a civilian environment.
当军人从前线回来，他们不是要从军队环境回到文明社会。
They're coming back to a community where everyone understands about the military.
而是回到一个人人都了解什么是当兵的社会。
Everyone's been in it or is going to be in it
每个人都曾经服役或者准备去服役。
Everyone understands the situation they're all in. It's as if they're all in one big tribe.
每个人都了解他们处于的环境。就像他们都处于一个大部落。
We know that if you take a lab rat and traumatize it and put it in a cage by itself, you can maintain its trauma symptoms almost indefinitely.
我们知道假如你用一只实验鼠，让它受到精神创伤，再把它独自放在笼子里，你可以永无止境地让它保持在精神创伤的状态。
And if you take that same lab rat and put it in a cage with other rats, after a couple of weeks, it's pretty much OK.
但假如你把同样的实验鼠放在有其他老鼠的笼子里，几个星期后，它的表现就会回复正常了。
After 9/11, the murder rate in New York City went down by 40 percent. The suicide rate went down.
在9/11之后，纽约的谋杀率下降了40%，自杀率也下降了。
The violent crime rate in New York went down after 9/11.
纽约的暴力犯罪率在9/11之后也下降了。
Even combat veterans of previous wars who suffered from PTSD said that their symptoms went down after 9/11 happened.
甚至在之前战役中，饱受PTSD的老兵都说，他们的症状在9/11之后有所缓和。
The reason is that if you traumatize an entire society, we don't fall apart and turn on one another.
原因在于，如果一整个社会范围内的群体都受到创伤，我们并不会因此瓦解崩溃，彼此针锋相对。
We come together. We unify. Basically, we tribalize, and that process of unifying feels so good and is so good for us,
而是融为一体，心连心。大致来说，我们产生了集体意识，团结一起的过程让人感觉很好，也对我们有益，
that it even helps people who are struggling with mental health issues.
甚至帮助了那些还在苦苦与精神健康问题缠斗的人。
During the blitz in London, admissions to psychiatric wards went down during the bombings.
在二战伦敦被德国轰炸的期间，精神病医院的患者减少了。
For a while, that was the kind of country that American soldiers came back to -- a unified country.
有一段时间，美军从海外返回的国家是一个团结的国家。
We were sticking together. We were trying to understand the threat against us.
我们紧紧相依，试图知晓到底是什么威胁着我们。
We were trying to help ourselves and the world. But that's changed.
试着自我帮助，加益于世界。但这些都变了。
Now, American soldiers, American veterans are coming back to a country that is so bitterly divided
现在，美国的在役军人、美国老兵，正在回到一个极其分裂的国家，
that the two political parties are literally accusing each other of treason,
两党互相指控对方叛国，
of being an enemy of the state, of trying to undermine the security and the welfare of their own country.
是国家的敌人，或者暗中颠复国家的国土安全和福利。
The gap between rich and poor is the biggest it's ever been.
贫富差距达到前所未有之大。
It's just getting worse. Race relations are terrible.
现状还在恶化。种族关系恶劣。
There are demonstrations and even riots in the streets because of racial injustice.
街上有人示威游行、甚至引发暴乱，全因种族歧视。
And veterans know that any tribe that treated itself that way -- in fact, any platoon that treated itself that way -- would never survive.
退伍军人知道，任何一个以这样的方式对待自己战友的部落或者连队，都不会存活。
We've gotten used to it. Veterans have gone away and are coming back and seeing their own country with fresh eyes.
我们却已经习惯了。退伍军人离开战地归来，用全新的眼光看待自己的国家。
And they see what's going on. This is the country they fought for.
目睹发生的这些，这就是他们为之浴血奋斗的国家。
No wonder they're depressed. No wonder they're scared.
也难怪他们会抑郁，他们会害怕。
Sometimes, we ask ourselves if we can save the vets. I think the real question is if we can save ourselves.
有的时候我们要问自己，是否能够拯救那些老兵。我反倒认为，真正的问题在于我们能不能拯救我们的社会。
If we can, I think the vets are going to be fine.
如果能，我想他们就会有所好转。
It's time for this country to unite, if only to help the men and women who fought to protect us. Thank you very much.
这个国家是时候该团结起来了，只为帮助那些为保护我们而奋勇斗争的人。非常感谢大家。