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0:53

As

0:58

a journalist, I'm so proud of the work we

1:00

get to do on the ground. It's important.

1:14

It matters. But I've got to be honest.

1:17

That news can also be hard

1:19

to absorb, to take in and experience.

1:22

As a dad, in moments like these, I can't help but

1:24

worry about what my kids are seeing and what they're hearing.

1:27

And you. If you're feeling burnt out

1:30

or overwhelmed or burdened by what you're seeing

1:32

or hearing on your screen or social media feed,

1:35

I want to tell you this.

1:36

I'm feeling it too. A lot of people

1:39

are. In the days after Hamas's

1:41

attack on Israel, the American

1:43

Psychological Association issued a statement,

1:46

specifically warning of the psychological impact

1:49

of the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza,

1:52

even for those who are simply watching

1:54

from afar.

1:55

Other research has linked exposure to that

1:58

violence in the media and the

1:59

as part of a cycle of harm to mental

2:02

health. That's why on

2:04

today's podcast, we're going to hit pause

2:07

on the current season of Chasing Life. This

2:09

episode was supposed to be about using food

2:11

to nourish your brain, and you'll hear about

2:13

that next week. But right now, I

2:16

think it's important

2:16

to talk about what we can all do to

2:19

take care of ourselves, to take care of our

2:21

brains and our minds, and to take

2:23

care of those we love.

2:25

And I'm not saying, hey, crawl under a rock

2:27

and have no idea what's going on. I'm not advocating

2:29

for that, but I am advocating for

2:32

perhaps not scrolling through on the

2:34

social

2:34

media where there's no trigger

2:37

warning, there's no warning, it's just a constant

2:40

diet of really upsetting images.

2:42

That's Dr. Gail Salts. She's

2:45

a clinical associate professor of psychiatry

2:47

at the New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill

2:50

Cornell Medical College. She's

2:52

also hosted the podcast, How Can I Help?

2:55

Today I'm going to be talking to Dr. Salts

2:57

about steps we can all take to balance

3:00

staying informed while also managing

3:02

our mental health. Plus, there's going

3:04

to be some tips for parents, myself included,

3:07

who may be wondering this, how

3:09

do I talk to my kids about all this? Should

3:12

I talk to my kids about all this? I'm

3:15

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief

3:17

medical correspondent, and this is

3:20

Chasing Life.

3:25

As you know, Dr. Salts, the American Psychological

3:27

Association released a statement shortly

3:30

after the attacks on Israel warning

3:32

that consuming violent and traumatic news

3:34

in and of itself can take a toll

3:37

on our mental health. These aren't necessarily

3:39

people who witness things firsthand, but

3:41

are then consuming this content online

3:44

or on television. Do you

3:46

see that? I mean, after a terrible

3:48

event like this, what do you see in

3:50

your own practice?

3:52

In my own practice, and even in a larger

3:54

group, I see that the visual

3:56

images give one

3:59

the impression of the image.

3:59

that the danger is

4:02

close. It's very

4:04

arousing, visual images

4:07

more so than something that you heard

4:10

or something that you read tend

4:12

to stick in your mind rather like a movie.

4:14

And they can become intrusive images

4:17

that you can't get out of your mind and

4:19

it's distressing and that causes an overall

4:22

arousal in the brain

4:24

and then in the body, physiologic

4:26

response to that, that sympathetic

4:28

nervous system says danger and you become

4:31

jittery, anxious. Those things

4:34

are something that we've known forever

4:36

and ever but this recent

4:39

ability to see these terrible

4:41

visual images which is really unlike 10 years

4:44

ago, 20 years ago and to have

4:46

them be a constant feed, constantly

4:49

available, I think is really

4:51

harmful particularly for children

4:53

but also for adolescents and also

4:56

for adults.

4:57

I have to say, I have

4:59

been doing this sort of work for a long time. I've covered

5:02

natural disasters and covered conflicts

5:04

all over the world and one thing that

5:07

I noticed was that conflicts were worse

5:10

for mental health versus natural disasters

5:12

because people were targeted and

5:15

there was a sense of feeling targeted. Natural

5:18

disaster is very awful but there was

5:20

often a sense of look, this was something

5:22

that was a natural act and

5:25

we're all in this together. What

5:27

has been so such depravity

5:30

with this particular event is that people

5:32

were targeted and many of those people were children, where

5:36

people had nothing to do with this

5:38

conflict and I have

5:40

to say just even for myself, it's been very

5:44

intrusive Dr. Saltz.

5:46

I'm having a hard time getting it out of my own

5:48

head.

5:49

You're an at-risk group Sanjay.

5:51

You journalists who

5:53

are in close proximity and who get

5:56

a constant diet of

5:58

horrendous particular... visually visual

6:00

information are at

6:03

increased risk for an acute

6:05

stress reaction. What does that mean? You

6:08

have some constant

6:11

high anxiety. You have trouble

6:13

sleeping. You maybe lose your appetite.

6:15

You don't feel pleasure and joy

6:17

in doing the things that you did before. And you have

6:20

sort of a sense of danger, like jittery

6:22

danger, right? And a percentage

6:25

of people who develop an acute stress

6:27

reaction will go on to develop

6:29

post-traumatic stress disorder.

6:31

Now,

6:32

the people most likely are people

6:35

who are in closer proximity

6:37

to the actual events, obviously, if you're

6:39

there or your family's there

6:41

or this touches you in some more

6:44

direct way. But even people who are ripples

6:46

out from this can develop,

6:49

and particularly people who either have a prior

6:52

mental health issue like an anxiety disorder

6:54

or a mood disorder, and people who have

6:56

suffered trauma in their past. And

6:59

it can be a completely unrelated trauma.

7:02

Any trauma, sexual trauma, physical

7:04

trauma of any sort makes

7:06

you at higher risk for reacting

7:09

to and developing this acute stress

7:11

reaction to these images we are

7:13

seeing. And that's why

7:15

I'm agreeing with the American Psychological

7:18

Association and other organizations that have come out

7:20

to say, hey, take

7:22

these social media apps off your

7:24

kid's phone for a while. But I

7:26

would also say for the adults, what

7:29

many people can do is to

7:31

really think about how they're consuming their news

7:33

right now. And I'm not saying, hey,

7:36

crawl under a rock and have no idea what's going on.

7:38

I'm not advocating for that. But I am advocating

7:41

for perhaps not scrolling through

7:43

on the social media where there's

7:46

no trigger warning, there's no warning,

7:48

it's just a constant diet of really

7:50

upsetting images.

7:52

I think the point that you make about social media

7:54

versus traditional media is really important.

7:56

And to be fair, I consume both. I think most people

7:59

do. But I

8:01

know working at a traditional media organization, we

8:03

go through this process editorially of determining,

8:06

look, is this image something that we should

8:08

be showing? Is it gratuitous in some

8:10

way? Does it serve a purpose? And

8:13

we do provide warnings. Look, the images

8:15

you're about to see could be very triggering

8:17

to people. Sometimes social media platforms

8:20

do that, but they might not. And you could

8:22

be scrolling and all of a sudden be bombarded

8:24

with very disturbing content.

8:26

And it's hard. Is that the world, do you think,

8:28

in which we now live? Is that just

8:31

going to be the way things are? Well,

8:32

I don't see it turning away from it. And

8:35

so I am concerned that is the world we, at

8:37

least now, are living in. We're not

8:39

prioritizing, let's say, mental

8:42

health over the access to

8:44

these things, because you know, they're very financially

8:47

driven. So I

8:49

don't see that changing in

8:51

the short term. And what

8:53

I could say to people is simply

8:56

this. If you are

8:58

not aware of how addictive

9:01

the looking is, so when

9:03

even when a warning comes on and says, hey,

9:06

this might not be appropriate, etc., many

9:08

people feel stoked to look more.

9:11

It's titillating. It probably zaps

9:13

a little bit of your dopamine system

9:16

to say, ooh, this is going to be something

9:19

dangerous, exciting, bad.

9:23

And for many people, they don't consciously think it through,

9:25

right? But they just are like, no, I got to stay. I have to see

9:27

this. And in fairness, sometimes

9:30

it's because for many people, what

9:32

they can imagine something terrible

9:35

might be even more terrible than the terrible thing

9:37

you're seeing, right? So people do

9:39

feel compelled to look, and they really have

9:41

to make a conscious decision. You know what?

9:44

I've checked in with my mental health, and

9:46

I am feeling physically and mentally

9:49

on such high alert. It's

9:51

taking a toll. I'm having trouble

9:53

being as present at work. I'm having trouble

9:56

going to sleep at night. I have to

9:59

say, I know. need a bit of a

10:01

news and social media diet right now

10:04

because it will help me. And without

10:06

making that very conscious for people, they're

10:08

probably just not going to do it.

10:11

I think the idea of what happens in the brain

10:13

and the fact that this type of content that

10:15

we're talking about will stimulate

10:18

the amygdala, which listeners of this podcast

10:20

and your podcast will know what that means. These

10:22

are the emotional centers of the brain. And

10:25

like it or not, you tend to stick around

10:28

when your emotional centers are flared up. And

10:30

it's a financial model, I guess. It's

10:33

a little bit sick, frankly, that someone

10:35

would go online to look for healthy recipes

10:38

and end up somehow being diverted

10:40

to eating disorders or whatever it may

10:42

be. But that's what sells the things.

10:44

Absolutely. And it's all anxiety isn't bad.

10:47

Some anxiety, right, it's our evolutionary

10:49

system saying, look out for the danger,

10:51

avoid it, do the problem solving

10:54

so that you can stick around another day

10:56

and pass on your genes. And

10:58

we also know, like, some anxiety

11:00

helps performance, it helps test performance, it

11:02

helps sports performance. But we know

11:04

that when you've gone past

11:06

that window of good performance

11:09

anxiety, we know all performance goes

11:11

down. We know mood goes down

11:14

and we know people suffer. And

11:18

so it's really hard to be

11:20

your own gatekeeper, because

11:23

you're up against a whole industry as you're

11:25

pointing out, that is also

11:28

banking on this

11:30

normal human evolutionary

11:32

response to having a brain

11:34

structure record fear and

11:37

say, oh, fear, I better

11:39

look, I better problem solve,

11:41

I better be aware, I better be on. And

11:45

it's just like we're not in our, you know, what I'll use a therapeutic

11:47

term from DBT therapy, we're not

11:49

in our wise mind, when

11:51

we're our amygdala is firing like

11:53

crazy. But we can become in a wise

11:56

mind by doing physiologic things

11:58

to calm our system.

11:59

system down so that you can

12:02

make better choices for your mental

12:04

health and for your family's mental health.

12:07

Dr. Saltz tells us more including some steps

12:09

we should all take right now after

12:12

the break.

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As Amika says, empathy is

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our best policy.

14:25

So I have three children. You

14:27

have three children. My girls, I have

14:29

three girls. They're 18, 16, 16, and 14. And

14:33

I'm curious with

14:36

regard to what's happening in Israel in the Middle East right

14:38

now. Should I be bringing this

14:40

up with them? Should I wait for them to ask

14:43

me questions? How do you approach

14:44

it? Yeah. I also have three

14:46

girls who are just, who are a little bit older,

14:49

but this is really, I

14:51

would say, the rule of thumb. Unfortunately,

14:53

because there is so much social media and so much discussion

14:56

and so on, chances are your child

14:58

has absolutely heard something already. If

15:01

your child is over 10, I

15:03

would say to you, you want to open

15:06

up this conversation because you

15:08

want to be the trusted source and you want them to be able

15:10

to talk to you about it. And you do that

15:12

by basically saying,

15:13

what have you heard?

15:15

What do you know? What do you feel

15:17

about what you've heard and what you know?

15:20

And let them tell you. Then

15:24

let them ask you questions that

15:26

you should answer honestly. You don't have to be

15:29

super graphic to answer honestly.

15:32

And sometimes the answer is, I don't know. The

15:34

answer is, I don't know. You say, you know what, but

15:36

I'm going to try to find some answers. But the idea

15:38

is that you want them to know that you're always

15:41

available to talk to them about their feelings.

15:44

And I would talk to your kids who are

15:46

over 10 about limiting what

15:49

they're seeing because it

15:51

will be better for them. And you need to explain

15:53

it that way. Hey, look, I'm very

15:55

aware, seeing all this all the time,

15:57

it's not good for your mental health. We

16:00

have to prioritize our mental health. So

16:02

for the next week, let's just say, we

16:04

can check in after that. Let's

16:06

just remove the TikTok,

16:09

or let's just remove

16:11

certain things and take a vacation

16:13

from that while this is

16:16

so disturbing and going

16:18

to disturb you. Because if it would

16:20

help, great, but it's actually

16:22

not gonna help. And then that's another thing to do

16:25

with kids is sort of talk about, can

16:27

we think about helping? Helping

16:30

for adults and kids is a great

16:32

defense mechanism. It really,

16:35

it helps people to feel better when they are

16:37

feeling scared and helpless

16:39

and so on. So, I

16:42

think that that's how I would tackle it. When your kid is

16:44

under 10, it's gonna be

16:46

very difficult for them understand

16:49

a lot of these things. So again,

16:52

I would listen for any evidence that

16:54

they've heard anything about anything

16:56

going. And then obviously if they have, you

16:58

wanna ask them similar questions.

17:01

How do you

17:02

know if something is becoming

17:04

problematic when

17:06

someone maybe should even seek out help from

17:08

someone like you?

17:10

Everybody gets anxious sometimes. And when

17:12

things are difficult and stressful like they are

17:14

now, they get more anxious. And that

17:17

is normal. But when you

17:19

are so anxious that you're unable

17:21

to concentrate, you can't concentrate

17:24

at work, so your work performance suffers. You

17:26

can't read a book cause you can't get through the

17:28

book. That basically the symptom

17:31

of feeling jittery and nervous

17:33

in your body and preoccupied

17:35

with anxious thoughts in your mind like all

17:37

day long, what if this happens? What if that happens?

17:40

Has risen to the level that it affects your

17:42

functioning in one or more important arenas

17:45

of your life, work, school, relationships.

17:48

Then that has risen to the level of

17:51

something that needs treatment, something that needs

17:54

attention. So if

17:56

that happens, and usually

17:58

we're talking

17:58

about for more than.

20:00

Amazing and important thing to know

20:02

about that is that they are treatable.

20:05

They don't require a long period of treatment.

20:08

So early intervention is absolutely

20:11

key. With what's happening now with all these images, if

20:13

your child has a couple of days of feeling

20:16

not only stomach aches and that sort of thing, but also

20:18

regressing a little, right? They don't want to be

20:20

alone, they're following you around. They don't want to go to their friend's

20:23

house. They achieved a milestone, they went back

20:25

in that milestone. They're having trouble sleeping.

20:27

Now they want to sleep in the bed with you. A

20:29

couple of things I would say to you. A

20:32

couple of days, well, you're going to give them some comfort.

20:34

You're going to help them to cope a little

20:36

with those feelings. You'll be understanding.

20:39

You'll talk with them about it. But

20:41

it doesn't mean they're going to develop an anxiety

20:43

disorder, but it does mean you want to attend

20:46

to it. But if they maintain that

20:48

falling off the development,

20:51

regressing, that's another symptom

20:53

that in fact they may really need

20:56

some sort of professional attention.

20:58

You are a psychiatrist and

21:00

you're well-informed. So this

21:02

sort of thing happens over the weekend. I

21:05

don't know how you first heard about it. If somebody told

21:07

you or you're watching the news, how

21:09

do you sort of balance being

21:11

well-informed while also being

21:14

really diligent about your own mental health?

21:16

Well, I do practice

21:18

what I preach and I will

21:20

limit what I'm looking at. I will limit

21:22

either by saying, like, okay,

21:25

that app, I'm not opening that anymore.

21:27

I'm going to look at my headline

21:29

in the morning. I might look again in the

21:32

afternoon and say, like, where are things? And

21:34

I'll read as opposed to looking

21:36

at images. And if I feel that

21:39

I'm being particularly stoked, I might increase

21:41

the coping tools that I do

21:43

personally find are helpful for me

21:46

because I know that bringing down

21:48

my body's physiologic

21:51

sympathetic nervous system response will

21:54

bring down the thoughts in my mind as well.

21:57

You know, Joseph LeDoux at NYU. researcher

22:01

and the one who really let us know

22:04

so much about the amygdala and fear also

22:07

really helped us to understand that anxiety

22:10

often once it's started

22:12

is happening first in

22:14

the body and then our

22:17

frontal lobe says well wait a minute let me come

22:19

up with a thought that makes this make sense that

22:22

I'm having this physiologic anxiety. So

22:24

it always feels to us like we thought a thought

22:27

and then our body had this response but

22:29

often it's the other way around but

22:31

it happens so quickly so quickly that

22:34

it doesn't feel that way. So when you

22:37

really ground and relax

22:39

your body and try to bring up your parasympathetic

22:42

response it helps your mind as well and I

22:44

so I do things that help

22:47

me to do that.

22:48

This does feel like a an inflection point

22:51

there are horrible things

22:53

we've already heard and seen but as you point

22:55

out Dr. Salt it's going to continue

22:57

for a while and there's going to be really

23:00

really tragic stories that we continue

23:03

to hear and images that we see. So if someone

23:05

does is in your office and

23:08

you want as part of their treatment

23:10

to help them talk them through relaxation

23:13

what are some of those things I wonder if you can

23:15

talk us

23:15

through that. So paste deep

23:17

breathing is really quite simple

23:20

you know you you would put your hand on

23:22

your chest.

23:23

I'm gonna do this as you're describing

23:25

it. Put your hand on your chest because you

23:27

would like to inhale and have your chest

23:30

upper chest expand and not your

23:32

belly that is sort of to help

23:34

you have a deep diaphragmatic breath

23:37

and you would breathe in through your nose

23:39

with your hopefully your hand your chest rising

23:41

to a count of five

23:43

a slow count of five and

23:46

then you would bring breathe out through your

23:48

mouth to a slow count

23:50

of seven a little

23:53

longer exhale than an inhale

23:55

and the reason is we

23:57

know on that long extra

24:00

exhale is what slows your heart rate

24:02

just a little bit and that helps bring

24:04

down, you know, bring the anxiety

24:06

down. So doing that slow

24:09

deep breathing, close your eyes, be in a very

24:11

relaxed position, sitting down,

24:13

things shouldn't be tensed up, you know,

24:16

and doing that for about five

24:19

minutes, ten minutes should

24:22

leave you afterwards feeling more

24:25

physiologically relaxed. Specifically,

24:28

progressive muscle relaxation is

24:32

tightening a muscle group to

24:34

a count of five, holding the

24:36

muscle group very, very tight to a count of five

24:39

and then releasing it. You

24:41

would start with your feet, flexing

24:44

your feet, holding

24:46

that very tightly for a count of five

24:49

and then releasing, tightening

24:52

your calves to a count of five

24:55

and then releasing. You would work your way up your

24:57

legs, then you would

24:59

do your arms, you know, to a count

25:01

of five, I'm

25:04

not counting to five but it would be longer than this obviously,

25:07

and then releasing and you

25:09

would do that with your shoulders, with your neck

25:12

and then at the end scrunching your face

25:14

to a count of five and then releasing.

25:16

So when you get basically to the top of your

25:18

head, you should be more relaxed.

25:23

That was my conversation with Dr. Gail Salts,

25:26

Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry

25:28

at the New York Presbyterian Hospital and

25:30

Weill Cornell Medical College. She's

25:32

also hosted the podcast, How

25:34

Can I Help? You know, I'm

25:37

really glad we took the time to have this conversation.

25:40

It's important

25:42

and I think it can help you right now.

25:44

But next week we'll continue with our regularly

25:46

scheduled programming as we continue this journey

25:49

through the brain.

25:50

We're going to serve up some food for thought

25:53

as we consider the nourished brain.

25:55

Most of my patients would rather reach for

25:57

yogurts than, you know, an antidepressant. That's

26:01

next time on Chasing Life.

26:10

Thanks for listening. Chasing Life is a production of CNN

26:12

Audio. Our podcast is produced

26:14

by Aaron Mathewson, Madeline Thompson,

26:17

David Rind, and Grace Walker. Our

26:19

senior producer and showrunner is Felicia

26:21

Patinkin. Andrea Cain is

26:23

our medical writer and Tommy Bazarian is

26:26

our engineer. Sandra Zula

26:28

is our technical director and the executive producer

26:30

of CNN Audio is Steve Lickti.

26:33

Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Seely,

26:36

and Nadia Kunang of CNN Health.

26:45

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