Continuing Education

Expand your clinical thinking. Strengthen your practice. Transform the systems around you.

Diagnosing Survival:
Ethical and Culturally Responsive Differentiation of Disorder and Adaptive Response in Black Boys and Men

3.0 Continuing Education Credit Hours

💳 $79

📅 Date: To Be Announced Upon Approval

🕤 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM ET

💻 Live Online (Zoom)

💬 Interactive Discussion

🧠Clinical Case Studies

📄Course Materials

📜 Certificate Included

Many behaviors commonly labeled as mental health symptoms in Black boys and men may actually be adaptive responses to chronic stress, racialized trauma, and unsafe environments.

This interactive course helps social workers strengthen clinical judgment by integrating systems thinking, applied neuroscience, and healing-centered practice into assessment, case formulation, and treatment planning.

Through clinical case studies, guided reflection, and interactive discussion, participants will develop more ethical, culturally responsive approaches to understanding behavior and making clinical decisions.

Course Overview

Learning Objectives:

  1. Differentiate trauma-related survival responses, culturally mediated behavior, environmental adaptation, and symptoms associated with diagnosable mental disorders when assessing Black boys and men.

  2. Apply social work ethical principles to diagnostic assessment, documentation, and referral decisions involving Black clients.

  3. Evaluate clinical cases for assumptions, bias, missing contextual information, and potential misinterpretation of adaptive behavior. 

  4. Analyze how racialized stress, environmental threat, systemic oppression, and developmental context influence neurobiological and behavioral presentation.


Meet Your Instructor

Kenneth L. Bourne Jr., MSW, LSW

TEDx Speaker • Author • Licensed Social Worker • Professor

Kenneth Bourne helps organizations and professionals redesign the invisible systems shaping human behavior, wellbeing, leadership, and belonging. His work has been delivered to universities, healthcare systems, school districts, government agencies, and national conferences across the country.

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