Clinical Considerations for Racial Trauma: Assessment, Intervention and Prevention

This workshop will provide an overview of the current understanding of racial trauma and will present strategies for assessment, intervention and prevention. Grounded in the empirical scholarship outlining the psychological impact of racism, the presenter will highlight race-based traumatic stress injury as a non-pathological approach to understanding the effects of racism. Clinical intervention will be framed from the perspective facilitating healing and will address facilitative knowledge, facilitative process, and facilitative techniques. The workshop will employ a self-as-instrument approach in order to highlight the critical need for clinician racial self-awareness and anti-racist commitment. Policy level approaches to the prevention of racial trauma will be outlined.

• Outline a procedure for the assessment of racial trauma within a psychotherapy treatment.
• Identify two aspects of facilitative knowledge, facilitative process and facilitative techniques need for effective response to racial trauma.

Alex Pieterse, PhD