Dr. Krishna Taneja offers MESS Mental Emotional Social Spiritual Stability and THRIVE helping individuals flourish

Jeff Williams:
Welcome to Community Voices, a production of NPR Illinois. I'm your co-host, Jeff Williams. In the studio with me today, integrative psychiatry practitioner, mind-body medicine expert, community-wide trauma specialist, Dr. Krishna Taneja. Dr. Krishna Taneja, how is it going?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
It's a fantastic morning to be here. I am an integrative psychiatrist, a mind-body medicine expert, and a community-wide trauma specialist. And excited to be here to talk about more of what I do and holistic approaches to mental health.
Jeff Williams:
Right on, I love it. So how long have you been practicing?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
So, I finished my training with Southern Illinois University right here in our community just about a year ago. And I've been in official practice with my big adult hat for the last year.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, right on. That's cool. When did you first start to feel the, you know, kind of want to go into this field? wow, that's awesome.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
So, at age 13, I knew, I saw a lot of what mental health was doing to my community. I grew up in India. And I was volunteering in the villages of India. And I saw a lot of what domestic violence did to the women over there, how it took away their independence and how the men struggled a lot with alcohol use disorder and how everything was very hush hush, stays behind closed doors. depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric conditions that were just never addressed. I'd had some friends go through things that they couldn't necessarily get help with because the adults in their life didn't quite understand what was happening. So that's when I knew I was going into mental health. And as I progressed, it became more and more clear that psychiatry was what I wanted to do. And I think growing up in India with a little bit more traditional medicine as part of our day-to-day medicine, I always wondered, wouldn't it be fantastic if we could include conventional medicine with more the holistic practices and bridge that gap? And that's also when my passion in integrative medicine started.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, cool. And so could you kind of tell us a little bit more about that, some of the details?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Absolutely. So integrative medicine is a combination of complementary alternative medicine with conventional medicine practices, taking a more holistic whole body the approach to health, in my case, mental health. And the idea is to be able to use all the tools in your toolbox from whatever medicine you may be educated in to provide the best care you can. And also to be able to address not just the physical body and symptoms, but the root causes of what's causing them and taking into account that we are not just the body or the organs or the cells. We are also our mind and intellect and emotions. We are also a product of our environment, of where we grow up, of our culture, of our community, and our society at large with everything that's happening.
Jeff Williams:
Right. Well, that's, you got to take all those things into consideration, you know, that you really do. It just has to be where it's like you're considering all these factors, the factors that any one of us go through somewhat together, but also individually, because we're also, we all can be so different. So all those factors definitely, to me at least, also seem very, very important, Absolutely.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Because for example, when we talk about suicide risk or mental health parts of it, it's suicide prevention isn't just, oh, here's the 988 hotline. Or here you're in with your psychiatrist and therapist. It's also housing crisis. It's also access to food. It's also shelter. it's clothing, it's safety, and so much more. It's racism, it's systemic things like that are determining somebody's day-to-day experiences and contributing to either their risk factors or their protective factors.
Jeff Williams:
Right, and really a lot of times, like how much anxiety a person feels just from Minute to minute.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Absolutely.
Jeff Williams:
Hour to hour, a lot of times that comes into play on a person's health.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Absolutely.
Jeff Williams:
Right on, so thrive.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Yes. So, I have two frameworks that I work with. One is the Mess Philosophy and one is the Thrive framework.
Jeff Williams:
Mess?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Mess.
Jeff Williams:
Like. M-E-S-S.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
M-E-S-S. Yes. So, a lot of times when people come to me, they feel like a mess.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
They're scattered brain, they're going through something either physical health struggled or mental health struggled. And what we work towards is stability. So mental, emotional, social, spiritual stability. In which case we work through all the modalities that I've talked about, the integrative tools that we have to help them feel more stable within themselves, safe within themselves, regulated within themselves, and discussing how stress, trauma, or anything else that they're experiencing, how it's actually affecting their physical, mental, emotional body, their nervous system, the effect that it's having on their gut health, the effect that their lifestyle is having on their health. So working through some of those things and once they've then achieved that regulation or stability, then the question comes, well, what else can I do for my community or myself? Or on the other hand, when we're talking about communities wanting to come together and do something and that's where Thrive comes into play, which is how do we go from mess to mess, the stability, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually stable, to thrive, which is trauma, healing, resilience in volatile environments. And that is how do we address the social determinants of health? How do we address population and community-wide trauma? How do we address how do we build communities that are not just trauma-informed, which is knowing about trauma and the impact of trauma, but how do we integrate that knowing into our day-to-day practice as a community, as hospital systems, as educational systems, and build a community that can then thrive with or without an adversity hitting us. So that was a product that I'd come up with after the Chatham Why Not tragedy?
Jeff Williams:
So you developed these then?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Yes.
Jeff Williams:
Right, okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but just so people understood that, you know?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Yeah. So those were my visions and strategies that I'd come up with. So prior to my residency training, I'd worked with the Center for Mind Body Medicine, which is the world's largest nonprofit for population-wide trauma across the world and going into war-torn countries or countries affected by climate change, gun violence, opioid crisis, anything, any kind of population-wide traumatic event, and building more resilient communities through a mind-body medicine program and giving people more power to deal with what they were going through. In that hat that I wore, I led two statewide programs. One was in Indiana and one was in California. So, the Indiana one was more the hospital's vision to work with the entire community. So, mayor's office, government offices, first responders like police, firefighters, EMTs, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, school, the prison system, but again, how do we build that trauma integrated community? And that was intended to be a pilot program for if we can do this in our state and over the years track what it does to our mental health of the community, we can probably replicate this. in other states. And it's been over five years since the launch of that program and the results have been great so far with a reduction in crime rates, reduction in substance use, those kind of things. And both mental health in schools and in each of these systems with prisoners being rehabilitated and prison guards also being more trauma informed and integrated in their practices. So it's really changing the way that community works. And then California was where the community came together and these individuals affected by the fires came together and they said, hey, we want a community program. So it started from the grassroots and it has now gone on to include their medical schools, gone on to include and become a part of the training of their medical schools and other organizations. And that's a similar idea of what we're trying to do in Springfield with SIU.
Jeff Williams:
Right on. So how did you go about the initial setting the wheels in motion for like to like with the Indiana with the for example with the state of Indiana how did I don't know if this is too much in the weeds but how did that initial like?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
The Indiana program was a vision of the hospital CEO of Eskenazi Hospital, Dr. Lisa Harris. And she'd initially brought this on as a vision of not wanting to wait for a traumatic event to happen in the community, but to be more proactive. So she'd started with doing a whole revamp of food as medicine within the hospital itself and it started as a nutritional program. Then it began to include the mind-body medicine aspects of training more of the practitioners within the hospital. So medical providers, DOs, MDs, as well as the support system, so like nursing staff, music therapists, other therapists, their chaplains going through that training. And it was championed by, the community program was championed by Dr. Lisa Harris, the CEO, and then two other people in the community. One of them was the chaplain at the hospital and another one was a therapist in the hospital. And so it started with them and became a whole community-wide program.
Jeff Williams:
Wow, very cool, very cool. And now, so from that, is that how the California the program or the initiative, or I'm not sure exactly what you'd call that, but was it because they heard about the Indiana or was it like a separate?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
So it's a separate thing because a lot of people come in connecting to the Center for Mind Body Medicine. They come in for their own healing and growth and they're maybe joining in for a group for their own health. Some people are a part of an organization and they're like, hey, I want to do something, but I don't know where to start. And then they come in aligning with the organizational vision aspect and like, how do I bring this to my community part of it? But whether they're healing or their desire or vision for community healing, they come in and align with the organization, meet more like-minded people, and that's usually where it starts from. So for example, the California program, started more with these individuals who'd lost their home, lost everything in the fires, and are going through consistent yearly trauma of that saying, hey, we need healing. We need support. And we want to be able to help the people around us, our friends, our neighbors, our families, because healing comes from community when they all had to come together in that crisis of trying to find a house, trying to find food, trying to find water, anything, trying to protect each other's kids and pets and rebuilding from scratch. And so it started from the people coming together and recognizing we need something else. And maybe we need someone who's not in the trenches right now to come in and help us. But the way the program works is it's to equip you for your own healing, but also the healing of your community. So it kind of supports you in building what you need for your program. So a lot of the different community programs work together in terms of the guidance and the leadership, because there is the system in place for that.
Jeff Williams:
Right. In a way, no matter the trauma, if you're at the base of the mountain, the trauma can be different But no matter what, it's like you're trying to get to the mountain top. The thing you're trying to do is be whole, is to not feel that trauma anymore. So it doesn't matter where you're standing at the bottom of it. You're trying to get to the place where you're not feeling that trauma, where that overwhelming constant anxiety or what is making you feel this certain way. I'm sorry that I'm not familiar with all the terms, but I'm just trying to break it down for anybody who's listening. And that's why I kind of wanted to just to mention how like you'd mentioned Indiana and California and maybe how the steps were that they might be separate things but they in a way they all here again kind of integrate together for the greater good in a way. So People getting a hold of you. Is there a way to, information out there so people can get a hold of you online or?
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Absolutely, they can go on my website, www..drkrishnathaneja.com, and they can join my newsletter to join the online courses that I'm launching and other projects in the work. Hopefully more podcasts, more books, more of these things so that the people and community can get more knowledge and information on how they can implement these tools.
Jeff Williams:
So then also it has here, you'd maybe worked on the Sonia Massey Commission then? Yes.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
So I was a member of the Mental Health and Emergency Response Work Group. And that was a very enlightening experience.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, yeah. Wow, very cool. Well, once again, we are in the studio with Dr. Krishna Taneja, integrative psychiatry practitioner. mind-body medicine expert, and community-wide trauma specialist. And I hope I'm saying this right. I know I kind of screwed it up the first couple times, but I think I'm getting better, doggone it.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Getting there.
Jeff Williams:
I'm getting there. I'm getting there.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
So I am working with a hospital system in Indiana and I'm adjunct faculty with SAU building the like the integrative psychiatry track. So more of the doctors that you all are seeing can be trained in those modalities.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Well, wow. And once again, we are in the studio with Dr. Krishna Taneja, integrative psychiatry practitioner, mind-body medicine expert, community-wide trauma specialist, addressing systemic pressures that contribute to a person's mental and physical health. Dr. Krishna Taneja, thank you very much for stopping by.
Dr. Krishna Taneja:
Thank you.
Jeff Williams:
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