Triage Space

Earlier this year, at Jenara Nerenberg’s #Reframe Conference, Joel Salinas M.D., was speaking about this triage space between curiosity, compassion and community. Yes. Music to my ears and a soft place to arrive for this oftentimes heart-achy body. Dr. Salinas is a psychiatrist in the Boston area. In a nutshell, he grew up as a child of immigrant parents with many neurological sensitivities and to learn more I recommend reading his book, Mirror Touch: Notes from a Doctor Who Can Feel Your Pain. Dr. Salinas is bringing a unique and necessary perspective to the conversation on mental disorders in the international medical community. I am so grateful. He highlights that the United States healthcare system needs to be reframed to meet the demands of the patients and transformed into a triage space. This triage space might even exist beyond the walls of a hospital or doctor’s office. In fact, it needs to exist everywhere.

Dr. Salinas shared the history of nervous diseases becoming what we know today as mental disorders defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). You are probably wondering, “What is a nervous disease?”.

1700 Nervous Disease (inquiry: where their doctors specializing in the nervous system?)

1808 Psychiatry first used (impact: the nervous system faded to the background)

1890 Beautiful Brain Ramon y Cajal (impact: we now had images of microscopic aspects of the brain)

1900 Freud & Jung (impact: the nervous system fades to the background even more with the rise in psychology)

1952 first DSM (inquiry: is this merely a coincidence that this surfaced just seven years after WWII?)

There is so much material here. Stay in inquiry. Be curious.