ISITDBT Anti-Racism Committee
Vision
The ISITDBT Anti-Racism Committee actively promotes culturally-responsive and anti-oppressive practices in the Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) community. Our approach and goals include utilizing an anti-racist and intersectional lens, making DBT accessible to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) clinicians and clients, and using DBT to improve DBT.
Values
- We know that racism creates an inherently invalidating environment. As such, we strive for an anti-oppressive, intersectional lens: Anti-racism challenges white supremacy and when done well dismantles structures that oppress all groups.
- We believe that everyone needs the work of this committee (especially white people, and most especially those with privilege and power).
- We center the voices and experiences of the BIPOC community (therapists and clients).
- We strive to apply the work of this committee to all aspects of our professional identities: as clinicians, as colleagues, as educators, as researchers, and as leaders.
- All people suffer. We know that DBT – a treatment that reduces suffering – is not equitably accessible for people of color. To help people of color create the lives they want to live, we must work against the structural and relational racism that presents a barrier to receiving effective treatment.
- We strive for consultation to the system to help reduce racist and oppressive behaviors that pathologize our clients.
- In supporting BIPOC patients and providers, we must all work to 1) dismantle the structural and relational racism that interfere in a life worth living 2) build organization/structures that decentralize and share power amongst and with communities marginalized in DBT.
Goals
- We strive to promote antiracism and culturally-responsive care within DBT
- We strive to use DBT to improve DBT
- We strive to make doing DBT sustainable for BIPOC clinicians
- We strive to help the DBT community embrace BIPOC clinicians and create a fertile environment for all clinicians to grow and learn from one another.
- We also strive to support clinics, and systems to do anti-racist work. White clinicians must do the heavy lifting of anti-racist work.
Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Providers in DBT Meeting
The ISITDBT Anti-Racism Committee has created a regular space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) providers doing DBT for the purposes of networking, brainstorming, and connecting with other people who may have shared some of our experiences and are doing similar work. We recognize that there is limited visibility of providers of color in many DBT spaces and it is meaningful to gather together to create a community addressing a variety of issues that we may not necessarily have the space or opportunity to express wherever we work.
The committee also recognizes there are many roles one can fulfill in the DBT community. As such we’ve chosen to include Doctoral and Master’s level clinicians, peer advocates, peer bridgers, care coordinators, clinicians-in-training, and others who play instrumental roles in the delivery of DBT services in a variety of settings. We ask that everyone be mindful and respectful of this diversity as you navigate the shared space.
The meetings occur on the third Wednesday of every month at 9am PST/12pm EST. The exception is the November meeting when we meet on the same day as the ISITDBT Conference:
- If you identify as BIPOC and would like to join: Please fill out the Google Form. We look forward to meeting you and building a community of BIPOC providers doing DBT!
Doing the Best We Can and Doing Better: The Path to Antiracism in DBT
As requested, here is the video of our presentation “Doing the Best We Can and Doing Better: The Path to Antiracism in DBT” from ISITDBT 2020 (some parts have been edited out at the request of clients whose experiences were discussed).
If you are able, please consider making a donation in support of BIPOC clinicians and trainees before you watch. You can make a secure donation here.
Thank you and we hope having this available is useful to you in your continued efforts to improve your interactions, training, and clinical work with BIPOC colleagues, trainees, and clients.
Resources for Anti-Racist Practice
You have undoubtedly encountered some great resources as the National and International conversation about Black Lives Matter and racism has bloomed in 2020. We have pulled together some resources that we think are especially helpful, AND we do not claim this is an exhaustive list! We hope it’s useful.
- A comprehensive website to learn, act, and organize around racial equity
- A far more comprehensive list than ours for anti-racist work
- A google doc (growing always!) for accountability for Black lives
- Discussion of race/oppression as an invalidating environment
- DBT’s own Armida Fruzzetti and Aditi Vijay giving a talk about racism and the invalidating environment
- Introduction to Abolitionism
- Powerful video about “the talk” Black parents have with their kids
- Scaffolded reading list re: anti-racist work
- SURJ: Showing up for Racial Justice (by and for white people to support POC)
Questions for Self-Reflection:
About education (yours and others’)
- Do you teach?
- When you teach, do you include race and racism in your curricula?
- How many books about race, racism, and/or whiteness have you read in the past year?
- How many organizations that work for racial justice have you donated to, volunteered with, or organized within the last year?
- Which of the following terms are familiar to you?
- Antiracism Colonization/Decolonization
- Cultural appropriation Institutional racism
- Microaggression White Fragility
- White privilege White spaces
About structures/organizations
- Does your organization actively and formally address racism?
- If yes, how? In the mission statement? In diversity panels/workshops/committees? In recruitment? In other ways?
At/about ISITDBT
- What barriers to attendance at ISITDBT (in person, not during COVID-19) exist for clinicians of color?
- Do you think of ISITDBT as a diverse space, a white space, neither, or both?
- What resources would you like to see ISITDBT offer to better support people of color?
- What resources would you like to see ISITDBT offer to better educate white clinicians to support people of color (both clients and fellow clinicians)?
- What race and racism-related changes are you hoping to see in the DBT community?
About clinical work
- Do you discuss systems of oppression in your introduction to the invalidating environment?
- If yes, which of the following have you discussed?
- Systemic racism
- Whiteness as “default”
- Patriarchy
- Anti-LGBTQ biases/beliefs
- The carceral state
- Climate justice
- What are other ways you include race and racism in your case conceptualizations?
- How do you discuss race with your clients, your group members, your consultation team?
Members
Vibh Forsythe Cox, PhD
Pronouns: She/Her
Vibh Forsythe Cox, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification certified clinician. Vibh is the eldest child of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, adoring older sister to an Autistic man, and devoted wife and mother in a multi-racial family.
Vibh has delivered DBT in a variety of settings including Maximum security forensic inpatient, Veterans Affairs medical centers, University Psychological services centers, and private outpatient clinics. At present, Vibh is the Director of the Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Clinic at the University of Washington. The MML DBT clinic is a specialty training clinic where advanced graduate students are trained in DBT. Through the support of generous donors, the MML DBT clinic is able to provide comprehensive DBT for clients with limited resources. Vibh is also a Trainer and Consultant for Behavioral Tech, LLC (BTECH) the training company, founded by Dr. Linehan, disseminates DBT and provides consultation and training to DBT teams internationally specializing in newly forming DBT teams. She is also the Training and Development Specialist at BTECH, working as part of the team that creates content for BTECH’s training offerings. Vibh was part of the team that helped develop Btech’s online training offerings, which have helped increase access to DBT training for many professionals internationally.
Vibh has done consulting work with DBT teams wishing to engage in anti-racism work at their organizations. Vibh also enjoys supporting our community by providing mentorship to professionals who have faced barriers and isolation related to their identities as people of color. Vibh is currently a member of the ISITDBT board. She is also a founding member of ISITDBT’s Anti-Racism Committee.
Clerissa Cooper, MS, LPC, CPCS, NCC, CCH, CDBT
Pronouns: She/Her
Clerissa Cooper is a Black, Queer, Southern Woman who is also a licensed professional counselor providing individual, group, and family-centered counseling for teens and adults. Clerissa received a M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Mercer University and has provided therapy in private practice, outpatient, residential, partial hospitalization, and intensive outpatient settings. She is the Clinical Director of North Atlanta DBT where she specializes in supporting folx with mood disorders, anxiety disorders including Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders, personality disorders, and issues associated with adoption and trauma through utilizing Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT-PE, Exposure and Response Prevention, clinical hypnotherapy, and somatic approaches. Clerissa is currently working toward completing her certificate in Somatic Experiencing, a holistic body-based approach to resolving trauma, from Somatic Experiencing International (SEI).
Clerissa has past professional experience in the women’s reproductive health field and utilizes Black Feminist, healing justice, and transformative justice frameworks to inform her work with clients. Clerissa works to expand accessibility of Dialectical Behavior Therapy with clients and clinicians who identify as Black, Indigenous, Non-Black People of Color, and other marginalized populations. In her practice, she also works specifically with Black Womxn, individuals who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community, community organizers, social justice activists, and healers. She continues to expand her training and practice to support individuals addressing the impact of interpersonal, structural, historical, and complex trauma while strengthening healing and wellness from a somatic approach that also incorporates intuitive, traditional, and ancestral healing practices.
Clerissa also provides consultation and training related to understanding Borderline Personality Disorder, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and clinical hypnotherapy within culturally responsive, anti-oppressive, and somatic frameworks.
Faria Kamal, PhD
Pronouns: She/Her
Faria Kamal is a licensed psychologist who provides compassionate, collaborative, research-supported therapy to children, adolescents, adults, and families. She serves on faculty as an Assistant Professor in Medical Psychology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Prior to that, she completed her residency and postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine.
Faria’s research has focused on underserved communities, particularly undocumented immigrants, LGBT populations, and effective anti-racist clinical practices. She is particularly passionate about and has provided extensive consultation to clinical teams nationally in addressing issues of anti-racism, incorporating evidence based research into clinical settings, and served as a consultant to technology and entertainment companies on issues related to mental health and well-being.
As a first generation Bangladeshi immigrant, Faria is committed to reducing barriers to mental health for racialized and underserved communities. She has been a community organizer for immigrant rights groups, prison abolition advocacy programs, restorative justice campaigns, and is committed to bringing anti-oppressive practices into mental health settings.
Erica Tan, PsyD
Pronouns: She/Her
Erica is a Chinese-Canadian, lesbian dog mom currently residing in the Pacific Northwest who uses DBT skills to cope with life’s lemons (e.g., breast cancer, sports related injuries, getting scammed) and enjoys building a life worth living with her wife adventuring with food, forests, and fun.
Erica provides treatment as a licensed clinical psychologist with Portland DBT Institute (www.pdbti.org) to at-risk teens and adults struggling with self-harm and suicidality. She also specializes in working with LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, as well as other marginalized populations. She is a member of the PDBTI training team and has led 2-day and 5-day CITI intensive trainings sponsored by PDBTI, and also provides consultation to clinicians and programs.
Erica is also a DBT-LBC Certified Clinician and is one of the co-chairs of the DBT-LBC Diversity Committee and was recently elected to the DBT-LBC Board of Directors. She is excited to serve on both the ISITDBT Anti-racism Committee and in DBT-LBC to help increase accessibility of DBT treatment for marginalized individuals and to help expand the visibility of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ DBT clinicians within the DBT community.
Nick Salsman, PhD, ABPP
Pronouns: He/Him
Nick Salsman is a board certified licensed clinical psychologist and fellow of the American Psychological Association, Society for Clinical Psychology. He is certified by the DBT Linehan Board of Certification (DBT-LBC). As a first-generation college student, Nick received his BA from Transylvania University and his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Louisville. He completed an internship at the adult and child psychiatry departments of Vanderbilt University. He also served as a postdoctoral fellow and research associate for Dr. Marsha Linehan at the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics (BRTC) at the University of Washington from 2005-2007.
Currently, Nick is a professor at Xavier University (XU). He is also the director of the XU Psychological Services Center (i.e., the training clinic for the XU clinical psychology doctoral program) and runs the XU DBT program where he provides clinical training and collaborates with students on research. He has regularly given local, national, and international workshops, presentations, and invited talks on DBT; he serves as a consultant for clinicians in the United States and internationally; and he works part-time as a psychologist for the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Nick is the current vice president and past conference chair for ISITDBT and is a volunteer for DBT-LBC. As a cisgender white man, Nick is committed to recognizing and utilizing his privilege to advance anti-racism work. In his free time, Nick loves spending time with his wife and two daughters.