Part 2: Working Towards Change

Who is this training for?

Yourself/team/organizations that have been struggling to adapt and implement anti-racist practices.

Yourself/team/organizations that are interested to recruit and serve more clients and clinicians of color.

*Scholarships are available. Please email v.arunagiri@lamaisondelesprit.com for more information

What does this training entail?

This training is for individuals who have completed Part 1 of our program. You will have gone through the process of lifting your racial lens and accepting and acknowledging your racial identity.

For Part 2:

• This training will have a didactic component, an interactive/experiential learning component and will end with a workshop.

• We will review your diary cards of racist and anti-racist behaviors as a group to practice exposure to talking about these issues and as an opportunity to practice using our DBT skills whilst talking about them. 

• We will provide a short didactic on how to become anti-racist and ways in which to implement these in your programs/practices.

• On the second day, we will split into small groups where we will conduct chain analysis on racist behaviors and identify solutions for them.

• The goal is that everyone will leave with an individual skills plan of what they will implement.

*The groups are assigned based on the questionnaires from Part 1 so that people are in a group with others of a similar level on this journey.

What will this event help you achieve?

By the end of Part 2, you will have an individual skills plan of the changes you are going to implement. These will include changes to implement with your team/organization as well as with your self. 

What are the goals of the training?

• To increase you and your team/organization’s awareness of your racial identity

• To increase your own and your team/organization’s awareness of racist and anti-racist behaviors

• To identify concrete, actionable changes for you and your team to implement so that you can:

                    o Work more effectively with clients of color

                    o Improve your trainings and environment for trainees of color

                    o Transform your DBT team into a courageous space for all identities

• To create sustainable solutions that will be implemented and continued to be worked on after the training

About the trainers

• Debra Bond is a clinical psychologist with expertise adapting DBT for use with the juvenile justice population.  She served as an administrator/ manager/clinician treating adjudicated youth with the State of CT for almost 14 years.  She recently co-authored a chapter “DBT in Juvenile Justice Programs” in the book “Dialectical Behavior Therapy in Clinical Practice: Second Edition”.  She is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Yale University School Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Psychology Section and is currently serving as co-chair of the Clinical Subcommittee of the Anti-Racist Task Force (ARTF) of the Department of Psychiatry. Debra has been a Licensed Clinical Psychologist serving a diverse population of marginalized  individuals with chronic trauma, emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety and a range of disorders for more than 30 years and has supervised and mentored psychiatry residents and psychology graduate students, practicum students, and fellows for over 20 years.  She received the Distinguished Faculty Award (2020-2021) in recognition of her outstanding contributions in psychological training from the Psychology Section, Department of Psychiatry Yale University of School of Medicine.

• Vinu Arunagiri is a clinical psychologist with expertise in adapting DBT for underserved populations, specifically women of color who have experienced intimate partner violence. She recently completed her post-doctoral training at the 3East Residential Program at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and her pre-doctoral internship at the DBT-IOP program at the Yale New Haven Hospital. She has served on multiple committees for anti-racism, authored papers, presented at conferences and provided consultation to teams to help them improve their anti-racist practices. She has received awards from the American Psychological Association and ISIT DBT for her research projects that were focused on adapting DBT for people of color.