Overcoming Diagnostic Overshadowing Webinar
June 7, 2023
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Brian Tallant, LPC, NADD-CC and Director of the RMHS Denver START program, hosted a webinar on a widespread and harmful issue that impacts the disability community: diagnostic overshadowing.
The term “diagnostic overshadowing” is a clinical term used to describe therapists’ tendency to overattribute mental health symptoms to a person’s developmental disability. This phenomenon has led to people with I/DD to be underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed when seeking mental health treatment. More recently, the term has come to define a cultural misunderstanding of disability that prevents people with I/DD from accessing mental health care.
The goal of this webinar was to aid participants in understanding this phenomenon and a discussion on how to educate the disability community and break down barriers to accessing care.
You can view the webinar below: