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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: