Chances are, you’ve heard of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. At 79,898 reviews, the book has more reviews on Amazon than the first book of A Game of Thrones.
New York Magazine says Bessel van der Kolk is “currently the world’s most famous living psychiatrist.”
“The Body Keeps the Score has spent 248 weeks on the New York Times paperback-nonfiction best-seller list and counting. To date, it’s sold 3 million copies and been translated into 37 languages.”
Van der Kolk’s big idea is that past mental traumas (as he defines them) can produce actual long-lasting changes in the body and brain, regardless of whether the person has a memory of the trauma or not.
This isn’t just a book about PTSD. Van der Kolk tries to validate his claims with research on people with PTSD, but he strongly emphasizes in the book that practically everyone could have trauma. In fact, he claims that it’s so prevalent that it is “arguably the greatest threat to our national well-being.”
Discussions of PTSD still tend to focus on recently returned soldiers, victims of terrorist bombings, or survivors of terrible accidents. But trauma remains a much larger public health issue, arguably the greatest threat to our national well-being.
—The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk also said on Big Think that:
“Trauma is actually extremely common. There’s a lot of debate about what a trauma is to this day. But, basically trauma is something that happens to you that makes you so upset that it overwhelms you.”
If Dave was on to something then nearly a quarter of people would have PTSD. A 2020 meta analysis suggests that 22% of babies have the cord wrapped around their neck when born.
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