Who has unconscious bias?
Who doesn’t?
Spoiler surprise. No-one does, because if bias was unconscious, you’d be asleep.
So it’s conscious, because you’re awake. What makes it seem unconscious is that you’re NOT AWARE of your bias
One of the factors that leads to diagnostic overshadowing is bias.
The University of Hartfordshire says:
Too often, the training undertaken by clinical staff has not prepared them for working with autistic people and those with learning disabilities in high-pressure environments.
This is particularly pertinent to general healthcare where staff in those settings have “very limited knowledge about learning disability".
Diagnostic overshadowing occurs when a health professional makes the assumption that autistics and persons with learning disabilities’ behaviour is a part of their disability without exploring other factors.
I think unconscious bias has slipped into our lexicon almost as an excuse to get things wrong. We use it to avoid acknowledging a lack of human rights. We need to do the work of radical self awareness to stop our bias from leading us down the route of diagnostic overshadowing.
Another bias is that mental distress and/or addiction is mainly about the person. We medicate and treat the person.
But what about the environment?
The social model of disability has been around for +60 years — raising awareness of barriers in the environmen that malign people physically.
How about people with mental distress, people with learning disability and autistics?
Do we look at where and how autistics and people with learning disability live and are treated? People say services are often more traumatic than symptoms.
Are your services havens of wellness? Or are they making matters worse?
So I encourage you to call out unconscious bias. Call it what it is - assumptions based on lack of awareness.
And also, please look beyond the diagnosis and to the person and what is happening around them.