Anti-Racist Considerations for Teaching CACREP Assessment and Diagnosis Courses

Abstract

Professional counselors must act as anti-racist social justice advocates throughout the counseling relationship, including assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning. Due to internalized racism and inappropriate instruments, assessment and diagnosis are two critical areas where marginalized populations have historically experienced misdiagnosis and pathologizing impacting overall client care and wellbeing. Inappropriate instruments, inadequate training, and counselor bias have profound impacts on access to treatment and resources for individuals holding marginalized racial identities. Although the call for anti-racist counseling is clear, the profession is still unclear on how to teach these concepts to counselor trainees. Counselor educators must be intentional about incorporating anti-racist concepts into all counseling courses including assessment and diagnosis. Situated by the historical context of racism within helping professions, we aim to provide practical teaching implications for infusing anti-racist content into assessment and diagnosis courses in counselor education.

Keywords

• anti-racist training
• assessment
• diagnosis
• counselor education