Racial & Cultural Diversity: Understanding Trauma and Intervention

Description

This course does not offer CE Credits. The same course is available for purchase and offers 1 CE hour for behavioral health clinicians.  See "related products" below.

Race-based trauma often hides in plain sight—embedded in daily microaggressions, systemic inequities, and historical oppression that continue to impact the mental health of BIPOC clients. As clinicians, failing to address these issues directly can undermine trust, silence lived experience, and limit the healing potential of therapy.

This course provides behavioral health professionals with the frameworks, language, and personal insight needed to better support clients navigating the ongoing effects of racial trauma. Through practical strategies and reflective guidance, participants will gain tools to open conversations, acknowledge difficult truths, and foster a truly inclusive and healing clinical relationship.

Dr. Sonja Sutherland, PhD, LPC, ACS, BC-TMH, brings more than two decades of experience to this course. She is a licensed clinician, professor, and nationally recognized trainer in racial trauma and cultural competence. Dr. Sutherland’s work is rooted in her leadership at Legacy Changers Worldwide and her research in culturally informed intervention and supervision practices.

Dr. Sutherland's approach combines research-informed insights, case examples, and deep reflection to guide clinicians through the internal and external work required to engage in anti-racist clinical practice. Participants are encouraged to assess their own readiness, recognize implicit bias, and develop actionable strategies for allyship in the therapeutic space.

Topics covered include the socio-political context of race-based trauma, the mental health effects of racial battle fatigue and microaggressions, strategies for broaching racial trauma in therapy sessions, and ethical responsibilities across behavioral health codes. The course also explores personal readiness for addressing racial equity, including self-care, vulnerability, and allyship in clinical settings.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the race-trauma connection: Learn how racism impacts mental health and contributes to trauma-related symptoms in BIPOC clients.

• Open effective dialogue: Gain skills to initiate and sustain safe, healing conversations around racial trauma in therapy.

• Foster cultural humility and growth: Evaluate your own role in racial equity and implement strategies for lifelong personal and professional change.

Why This Course?

• Clinically essential training: This course equips you with the insight and strategies needed to ethically and effectively serve clients impacted by racial trauma.

• Expert-led and research-informed: Dr. Sutherland is a respected leader in cultural competence and trauma work, making this training both authoritative and practical.

• A safe, structured format for learning: Engage with the material at your own pace through a self-study model designed to promote self-reflection and deep learning.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the connection between race-based traumatic stress injury and chronic psychological distress experienced by BIPOC individuals.

• List 2 key steps/processes involved in successfully & therapeutically talking with clients about discrimination, racial stress, and racial trauma.

• Identify 2 ways to evaluate the extent of, and move the needle on, one’s own involvement in promoting racial equity.

This course offers a meaningful opportunity to deepen your cultural responsiveness and clinical integrity. Let this training support your commitment to ethical, effective, and equity-centered care—one client conversation at a time.

Enroll today to develop your skills and enhance your impact as a behavioral health professional.

Format and Access

This is a non-interactive, self-study program and consists of 1 hour of video instruction and evaluation.

Course Details

Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services. This continuing education course is designed for licensed behavioral health professionals and provides training in suicide prevention using expressive arts as an integrative approach. However, this is not a creative arts therapy course and does not provide training in creative arts therapy.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to Attend: 

Course access and completion instructions.

Instructor and Disclosures

Instructor

About Dr. Sonja Sutherland, PhD, LPC, ACS, BC-TMH

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Sutherland is the founder and CEO of Legacy Changers Worldwide, an organization dedicated to providing family education and mental and emotional wellness resources. The Legacy Changers Worldwide umbrella has provided support through the Legacy Changers Counseling Center, The Family Healing Room, VASAYO, and previously as host of a local Atlanta talk-radio show focusing on family relationships and mental wellness. In addition, Dr. Sutherland provides intermediate and advanced continuing education workshops for licensed clinicians, and post-masters supervision for associate licensed clinicians through Legacy Professional Development & Training. Services and programs offered by Dr. Sutherland.

In the mental health field since 1998, and licensed since 2001, Dr. Sutherland has provided therapeutic services in the private practice, psychiatric residential, in-home, and outpatient mental health settings, for adolescents and adults, through individual, group, couples, and family therapy. She has specialized in working with adolescents, couples and families for the last 22 years. One of Dr. Sutherland’s historical research interests has been evidence-based treatment within residential settings for commercially sexually exploited youth, which was a primary focus of her dissertation and clinical expertise during her years as a clinician in the psychiatric residential setting. Her ongoing research interests include clinician-in-training cultural competence development and clinical supervision.  Within the last 5 years, Dr. Sutherland has provided training, researched, and published in the areas of racial trauma, cultural competence development and training, the provision of culturally-informed clinical intervention and supervision, and social justice advocacy.

Dr. Sutherland's CV.

Disclosure Statement: 

The instructor(s) for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose.

CE Hours

This course does not offer CE credits, just great content.

The same course is available for purchase and offers 1 CE hour for behavioral health clinicians. See "related products" below.

This course is a non-interactive, online self-study.

Participants may request a printed version of their certificate of completion to be delivered by mail. A shipping/handling fee of $6.95 will be charged per request. Shipping internationally may require an additional charge.

Accommodations and Policies

Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations.

You can click on the following links to view our policies:

• Accommodations for Individuals with Disabilities.
• Cancellation Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Support Options
• Disclosure Statement