Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Group: A Closer Look at One Mode of the Treatment

Course overview

This virtual 15-hour Training is designed for Mental Health and Substance Abuse staff who want to learn to teach, or to improve their teaching of the DBT Skills to clients. Learning and teaching DBT skills also helps staff weather their own stressors of working with challenging clients, in challenging times, and helps staff decrease burnout, feel more confident in their work with clients and creates stronger teams. DBT skills Training is one of the 4 modes of treatment in comprehensive DBT in which clients learn and practice new coping skills. This training covers the fundamentals of facilitating a skills training group including exposure to the skills themselves. Participants learn how to set up a group, define participant criteria, set group goals and guidelines, model effective teaching methods, learn the roles of co-leadership, identify and solve common problems in skills groups, give meaningful homework assignments and review homework assignments in a way that promotes active engagement with different client populations and settings. Particpants will be provided with a copy of the DBT Skills Training Modules adapted by Nancy Gordon, LCSW from the original DBT Skills Training Manual by Marsha Linehan in 1993. In addition, the training will include updated skills from Linehans's "2nd Edition Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets" the accompanying "Training Manual", and "DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents" by Miller and Rathus, (2014) which are recommended purchases. It is also recommended, but not required, that participants have some basic knowledge of the DBT model of treatment through reading "Cognitive Behavior Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder" by Dr. Linehan, or have had some prior training in DBT since we will not be addressing the other 3 modes of the treatment.