Helping Give Away Psychological Science/DiSSECT: Dismantling Systemic Shortcomings in Education and Clinical Training

Dismantling Systemic Shortcomings in Education and Clinical Training (DiSSECT) is a student-led group dedicated to facilitating anti-racist change in mental health training programs. We strive to create, compile, and disseminate open-access resources to address program-level systemic shortcomings, while amplifying BIPOC voices. We aim to alleviate the burden of those most affected by systemic racism and center the voices of individuals who are already doing this work.

Click Here for Landing Page

HGAPS Spring 2025: Mental Health and Resilience Resources for Squid Game

Click Here for Landing Page

Squid Game 2 had 68 million viewers on its launch -- that is a lot of people who might benefit from resources organized by themes in each episode. Check out this resource built by a team supported in part by a WMF Rapid Grant after season 1!
~ More at HGAPS.org ~

---

Projects

Current Objectives:

1. Create an anti-racism self-audit toolkit to disseminate to mental health training programs. This toolkit will include:
   1. A self-audit survey to assess anti-racist efforts across specific areas of programs.
   2. Comprehensive checklists of actionable recommendations and resources to improve anti-racist infusion across the following categories: clinical training, coursework, research, recruitment, and program climate.
2. Review and compile empirical articles providing statistics on the effectiveness of our recommendations. These can be used when:
   1. Applying to grants
   2. Proposing talks for conferences
   3. Increasing awareness across departments
   4. Proposing actionable changes to academics/those in power
3. Provide BIPOC and traditionally underrepresented individuals with a “Marginalized Survival Kit” to navigate academia at every level.
   1. Create collaborative document that addresses the needs of marginalized students
   2. Gather resources related to specific needs including but not limited to (i.e., racism & discrimination in academic, professional development, mental health care).
4. Continue to collaborate with Helping Give Away Psychological Science (HGAPS) to:
   1. Create Wikiversity pages related to our mission (see
   2. Code validated measures that assess anti-racism
5. Amplify voices of trainees, educators, researchers, and clinicians by curating resources based on their content (e.g., twitter posts, books, lectures, existing climate survey results, and anecdotal needs of individuals who belong to minoritized groups).
6. Create a centralized platform (i.e., a website) that houses all of our anti-racist resources and recommendations. See resource document for current tools.

Future Directions

1. We anticipate using these same models for future projects
2. We are here to help with any project that will amplify BIPOC, minority, intersectional identity voices and connect individuals and programs with assessments and resources.

Conferences and Meetings

Conferences

Florida State University Directo's 3rd Annual Symposium of Diversity & Inclusion in Research & Teaching: "Addressing Systemic Shortcomings in Mental Health Training Programs"

Resources

See Resource Page: Addressing Systemic Shortcomings in Mental Health Training Programs: Toward an Anti-Racist Model

See DiSSECT Graduate Program Evaluation Tool for Racially Marginalized Students Applying to Graduate School

Collaborators

1. Helping Give Away Psychological Science (HGAPS)
   1. a non-profit (501c3) dedicated to improving widespread information about psychology (e.g., on Wikipedia) and creating accessible resources for dissemination.
2. Clinical and Counseling Students for Diversity Equity and Inclusion (CCS-DEI)
   1. Group aiming to unite students working toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice within psychology graduate training programs

E-mail and Social Media

Email: dissect.team@gmail.com

Twitter

Get involved