Comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

40 hours | 40 CEs

This on-demand professional training program on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Implementation is presented by Michele Galietta, PhD.

This comprehensive training is designed specifically for individual therapists or skills trainers who are members of an intensively trained DBT team but have not completed Intensive training themselves. It is meant to assist teams that have hired new staff or experienced turnover by allowing newer team members to get trained in the standard content of DBT.

This program includes training in Skills DBT. The DBT Skills Training program is an excellent means of training new team members and milieu/line staff and strengthening existing team members’ skills. This program focuses on Skills Training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a comprehensive cognitive behavioral treatment that is increasingly being used in a variety of health settings. 

Comprehensive DBT has been found to have great practical utility for the reduction of violence and self-harm. DBT Skills are an essential component of comprehensive DBT, and some evidence suggests that skills alone, with case management, may be efficacious for less acute individuals as well. The primary focus of this program will be the content and delivery of the skills component of DBT with an emphasis on relevant adaptations for forensic clients (e.g., substance abuse, skills for reducing violence & obsessional thinking).

Throughout the program, didactic presentations with relevant case examples will alternate with participant practice of DBT skills. This program will contain a discussion of strategies for successful implementation and interactive discussion with participants about the potential application of DBT Skills to their settings/populations. Participants will learn how to apply and teach the effective DBT skills of Core Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Distress Tolerance, and Emotion Regulation. Participants will also learn how to apply and teach the effective DBT skills of Core Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Distress Tolerance, and Emotion Regulation.

This program includes Forensic Applications of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) training. Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a comprehensive cognitive-behavioral treatment originally developed for women with chronic suicidality and borderline personality disorder. Since the 1990s, DBT has been subjected to numerous clinical trials and has been adapted for a variety of populations, including adolescents and forensic inpatients and outpatients. DBT has been found to have great practical utility for the reduction of violence and self-harm in forensic settings.

This program provides participants with a thorough introduction to standard DBT, as well as specific adaptations and strategies useful with a variety of adult and juvenile forensic settings (e.g., jails/prisons, forensic hospitals, juvenile justice settings, probation.) DBT can reduce problem behaviors in individual clients and also functions to stabilize the milieu by employing Eastern principles of acceptance and compassion paired with careful application of behaviorism. The program discusses comprehensive DBT in forensic settings and the research supporting this intervention.
The following texts are required for this training program:

1. Linehan, M. M. (2014). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.
2. Linehan, M. M. (2014). DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.