(10 min)
Introductions Presenter and participant introductions, including positionality and
the limits of what this session can do.
(20 min)
Setting the Stage:
How Bias Operates
Clarifying the terms this field uses loosely: implicit and explicit bias,
structural and institutional racism, interpersonal and internalized
racism, aversive racism, and color-blind racial ideology.
Time Segment Description
(15 min)
How Bias Surfaces in the
Room
Microaggressions (microassault, microinsult, microinvalidation),
diagnostic overshadowing, testimonial injustice, and stereotype
threat — in both directions, from professional to client and client to
professional.
(15 min)
Impacts on Clients and
Professionals
Minority stress, racial trauma, allostatic load, weathering, and
therapeutic and medical mistrust. How discrimination becomes
embodied, and why mistrust is a reasonable response.
(15 min)
Frameworks to Counter
Bias
Cultural humility, critical consciousness, anti-oppressive practice,
intersectionality, and positionality — with participants naming what
they have already tried.
(50 min)
Micro-Level Case Studies The individual clinical encounter: diagnostic overweighting, language
access, religion read as pathology, diagnostic overshadowing, ageism,
weight bias, paternal postpartum depression, microaggression and
alliance rupture, bias directed at the clinician, and client
self-censorship.
(30 min)
Mezzo-Level Case Studies The agency, program, and community level: intake forms that exclude
chosen family, assessment tools normed on narrow populations,
inaccessible facilities, identification requirements at intake, and
insurance-driven session limits.
(20 min)
Macro-Level Case Studies The policy and societal level: crisis response and involuntary holds,
licensure barriers for internationally trained clinicians, culturally
responsive care for Jewish clients, state restrictions on
gender-affirming care, and reimbursement structures.
(5 min)
Conclusions & Questions Synthesis and open discussion.