What is DBT?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a cognitive behavioral treatment developed by Marsha Linehan, PhD, ABPP. It emphasizes individual psychotherapy and group skills training classes to help people learn and use new skills and strategies to develop a life that they experience as worth living. DBT skills include skills for mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.
What skills are taught in DBT?
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Mindfulness: the practice of being fully aware and present in this one moment
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Distress Tolerance: how to tolerate pain in difficult situations, not change it
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Interpersonal Effectiveness: how to ask for what you want and say no while maintaining self-respect and relationships with others
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Emotion Regulation: how to change emotions that you want to change
What are the components of DBT?
DBT skills training group is focused on enhancing clients' capabilities by teaching them behavioral skills. The group is run like a class where the group leader teaches the skills and assigns homework for clients to practice using the skills in their everyday lives
DBT individual therapy is focused on enhancing client motivation and helping clients to apply the skills to specific challenges and events in their lives.
DBT phone coaching is focused on producing clients with in-the-moment coaching on how to use skills to effectively cope with difficult situations that arise in their everyday lives.
DBT therapist consultation team is intended to be therapy for the therapist and to support DBT providers in their work with people who often have severe, complex, difficult-to-treat disorders. The consultation team is designed to help therapists stay motivated and competent so they can provide the best treatment possible.
How does DBT prioritize treatment targets?
Life-threatenthing behaviors: behaviors that could lead to the client's death are targeted, including all forms of suicidal and non-suicidal self-injury, suicidal ideation, suicide communications, and other behaviors engaged in for the purpose of causing bodily harm.Â
Therapy-interfering behaviors: these behaviors can be on the part of the client and of the therapist, such as coming late to sessions, cancelling appointments, etc.
Quality of life behaviors: any other type of behavior that interferes with clients having a reasonable quality of life, such as mental disorders, relationship problems, and financial or housing crises
Skills acquisition: this refers to the need for clients to learn new skillful behaviors to replace ineffective behaviors and help them achieve their goals
