Introducing Dr. Esperanza Salinas: BJU's New Psychiatrist

Welcome to Beijing! What brings you here?

I came to Beijing because I wanted to have an international experience, and I wanted the same for my family. I wanted my kids to learn Mandarin. I wanted to know what the rest of the world is like. There are more than 1.4 billion Chinese people – a third of the world – so it made sense to me that we should have this experience. BJU gave me the opportunity to be able to give that to them.

Tell us about your medical background! 

I am a physician, born and trained in the United States. I completed medical school at Southern Illinois University in Springfield, Illinois, and graduated in 1999, almost 20 years ago. I did my internship year in internal medicine then transferred over to psychiatry. I trained in psychiatry at the University of Illinois and I finished in 2003. From 2003 to 2005, I completed a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry and then I did a second fellowship at Emory University in forensic psychiatry. I am board-certified in adult psychiatry (2005), child psychiatry (2005) and forensic psychiatry (2007). I have been recertified in all three.

What are your areas of special interest?

My area of specialization is young adults; the college-aged population and young professionals. This population allows me to combine my different sub-specializations and my clinical experiences with adults and children/adolescents. This is the area that I enjoy working with the most, but I’m able to do most areas of psychiatry. 

If you were to ask me in psychiatry specifically what is my area, I’m probably most competent in treating some of the more severe mental illnesses or some of the more treatment-resistant illnesses. I say this because I’ve worked with some very tough cases. I am board-certified in forensic psychiatry. This area of psychiatry is anywhere where psychiatry and law overlap. As a forensic psychiatrist, you are evaluating individuals that have been arrested and have significant charges against them. One’s ability to diagnose and evaluate is one of the more salient aspects of the forensic psychiatrist.  

After my forensics fellowship at Emory, I was an attending for two years on a child and adolescent unit. In other words, I was the psychiatrist that took care of children that were hospitalized. The hospital that I worked at was very specialized in that these children were wards of the state, and were very sick. These children and adolescents struggled with illnesses such as severe depression, severe anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. 

Following this, I worked in a university practicing college mental health. As a psychiatrist working in the college mental health setting, I treated many students with psychological illness or struggles. My patients ranged from kids in their teens (17 or 18) through to people in their late 20s. I treated undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students.  

After this, I was with the federal government working with severely mentally ill people in the military. 

In a nutshell, this is what I’ve done since completing my training more than 10 years ago.

We know you probably get this a lot: What’s the difference between psychology and psychiatry?

Psychologists are great and a great part of the team in providing the best treatment for people. The difference between psychology and psychiatry is our training and focus. Psychiatrists are medical doctors and our training is more science-based i.e. more medical-based. We do the biological piece of it, the medicine component, in addition to the therapy piece. We train in all the medical specialties (surgery, OB-GYN, internal medicine, etc.) and when we graduate from medical school, we choose our specialty. My specialty was psychiatry. Psychologists, on the other hand, specialize in therapy and training-specific types of testing.  

What kind of issues should people come to you for?

A psychiatrist should be comfortable seeing anyone that is struggling emotionally or physically. We treat illnesses like depression, anxiety, ADHD, psychosis, and bipolar disorder, but we also treat other things like stresses at work, relationship issues, parenting issues, and feeling overwhelmed. Just about anything that affects the individual emotionally.

Do you mainly help patients by giving them medicine or do you do more of the therapeutic, talking stuff?

I tend to be conservative with medication. I do use medication, but I believe that the majority of the work that happens is not just the medicine piece of it, it is the therapy piece of it – it is the relationship or the connection between the doctor and the patient. So yes there is a talking piece! There’s a lot of talking and processing and feeling. 

Is there anything about your specialty that you wish people knew more about?

I think the hardest part about my specialty is that there is still very much a stigma associated with depression, anxiety, and any kind of emotional suffering. I think a lot of people suffer in silence. They tend to worry about how they will be perceived, what others will say, how they will be judged if others knew about the suffering. People think, “I should just get over this. I should just pull myself up by my bootstraps,” and I say, “If only it were that easy.” There’s a biological component, which science is just now discovering, that tells us that stress leads to changes in brain chemistry, which then affects mood and wellbeing. So, it’s not as simple as just being able to deal with it: There are all these biological processes occurring in stress and in psychiatric illnesses. Depression and anxiety are not things that people can just will away.

I also think there’s a lot of fear in coming to see the psychiatrist. People  think, “Oh, the psychiatrist is going to think that I’m crazy” or “I heard that all psychiatrists are a little nuts.” There are all these misconceptions about psychiatrists and psychiatry. But, at the end of the day, we’re just people and we’re just trying to help a person to alleviate their suffering, however that’s experienced.

We hear you speak Spanish?

Yes. I am Mexican-American. I was born and raised in the United States but my parents’ mother tongue is Spanish and so I learned Spanish growing up. I feel comfortable speaking in Spanish, although my preference is English. I see the need for Spanish-speaking professionals in psychiatry and psychology and I am able to do that. It’s also comforting to connect with someone who speaks your language or your mother tongue so that you can feel a little bit more comfortable in such a foreign place.

Dr. Salinas is an American board-certified child and adult psychiatrist. To make an appointment with her, call our service center at 4008-919191.

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