Age, race, ethnicity, weight, gender, social class, religion, sexual identity, gender identity, profession…this list, of course, is incomplete. The point is that there are multitudes of differences between people. Unfortunately, an interaction with another person can trigger unconsciously held negative or stigmatizing attitudes. Even more worrying, the research shows that unconscious (i.e., implicit) biases of mental health professionals influence how they assess and treat their clients.

To address this problem, the goal of this training is to assist clinicians in increasing their awareness of internally held biases towards particular groups of people. But awareness isn’t enough. We will also explore how to manage biases, change behavior, and track progress. This webinar will help you reassess your paperwork, review how you run your clinical practice, and explore how you might best serve clients, regardless of their background.

We might have little control over the biases that we have, but what we do have is the power to ensure that those attitudes do not prevent us from treating clients equitably and with dignity.

Upon completion of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Define internal biases
• Identify strategies for managing their implicit biases
• Use strategies that can lead to behavior change, in terms of addressing and shifting their biases