Racial Trauma and Unconscious Racial Bias: A Combined Teaching and Reflective Practice Intervention

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Differences in mental health outcomes for people from ethnic minority groups highlight the systemic barriers to accessing good-quality psychiatric care. Psychiatry trainees should understand the impact of structural inequalities and deliver equitable clinical care for all; this is in keeping with current curriculum requirements from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) in the United Kingdom. To address this curriculum requirement, as well as to explore barriers that trainees faced to discussing unconscious racial bias, a combined racial trauma lecture and reflective practice session was organised as part of mandatory psychiatric postgraduate training in a regional training scheme in England. It was delivered to ten psychiatry trainees, six of whom anonymously filled in a feedback form before and after the session. This measured, using a five-point Linkert scale, trainees’ self-reported understanding of racial trauma (improvement by 0.5 points) and their ability to integrate this into daily psychiatric practice (improvement of 1 point) before and after the session. It also revealed that trainees found the session useful, relevant, engaging, and appropriate for their level of training. Feedback from a previous reflective practice session highlighted some of the emotions (fear, discomfort, anger, guilt, and sadness) and barriers (topic sensitivity, uncomfortable feelings, fear of judgement, and time constraints) that psychiatry trainees face when discussing unconscious racial bias and inequality. The combined session illustrated that some of these barriers can be overcome alongside improving trainees’ confidence in understanding and applying concepts of racial trauma in clinical care. Furthermore, it emphasised the need to proactively create intersectional, anti-racist spaces where these issues can continue to be discussed, explored, and reflected upon.