DBT Skills Training: Extended™

About the Course

This 5-day extended workshop is a comprehensive training in the DBT Skills and is intended for those who are ready to make a serious commitment to the implementation of DBT Skills training to more effectively serve their programme participants. It allows participants to obtain an essential and enhanced knowledge base of Core Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness, as well as the programmatic context and training methods required to help patients move from skills acquisition to generalisation of skills into their natural environments.

Participants learn about the function of skills training in DBT, the structure of a DBT skills training programme, the content of each skills module, and the targets for DBT skills training. The intended purpose of the various skills and the rationale (including the evidence) for their inclusion in the treatment are addressed. It also provides an overview of the manner in which DBT conceptualises problems, as well as the behaviour change, validation, and dialectical strategies used across all modes of the treatment.

This course is our DBT Skills Training: Essentials™ and DBT Skills Training: Enhanced™ workshops combined and delivered over an extended period of five days. Clinical examples are used to illustrate specific skills training procedures.

As a result of this training, participants will be able to:

• Describe the key elements of DBT skills training.
• Conduct DBT skills training.
• Identify the targets for DBT skills training, explain the goals of the DBT skills modules and identify the strategies and procedures required for effective DBT skills training.
• Describe the evidence, convey the rationale, teach the skills, and identify situations where Core Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Interpersonal Effectiveness and Emotion Regulation skills can be helpful.
• Demonstrate the following: strategies for increasing client motivation; the ability to manage questions, conversations and comments in skills training; the ability to manage interactions among skills training participants; how to solve problems that arise during skills training class.
• Employ strategies for creating an engaging skills training class where specific skills are identified to help with specific and relevant situations, where patients are motivated to engage in skills and behavioural rehearsals and where questions and activities are used to assess skills deficits.
• Conduct missing links analyses of incomplete homework assignments as well as chain analyses in the context of skills training classes.

Prerequisites

Prior knowledge of DBT is not required. This training will be enhanced if participants are familiar with Dr. Marsha Linehan’s DBT® Skills Training Manual, Second Edition, and should attend the training with this book.