The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Team

You can speak to your care coordinator to find out more information about the service. If they are not able to answer your questions they can speak to a member of our team to find out what you want to know.

If you think DBT might be helpful for you and you would like to be referred your care coordinator can complete a referral form for you, once you have given consent.

A referral to DBT does not mean you will definitely come into the programme. This will be decided by you and the DBT therapist who assesses you at the end of pre-treatment.

Once the referral has been made, and if it is accepted by the DBT team, you will get a letter from the DBT team inviting you to an initial assessment.

Unfortunately no. For DBT to be helpful you would need to complete all parts of the programme, as they work most effectively as a whole.

You may feel very nervous about coming into a group—lots of young people do! - and it is likely other group members will be feeling like you do. Any challenges you face in the group can be discussed in your individual session and used as an opportunity to practice some of your DBT skills!

Some of the feedback from young people who have attended a DBT skills group has said it was helpful for the following reasons:

There are five modules that run in the group programme, over 24 weeks.

* The first module, Mindfulness and Orientation, is repeated at the start of every new module to allow new starters to join the group and revisit mindfulness skills.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness skills underpin all of the other skills; to practice the other skills you need to practice mindfulness. It helps us take a step back. You will learn to observe and describe what is happening inside you and around you. You will learn to be ‘in the present’ rather than the past or the future. You will learn how to monitor your thoughts, emotions and urges and to let them pass, rather than acting on them impulsively.

Walking the Middle Path

This module was specifically developed for young people and their families. You will learn to see situations from more than one point of view. You will also learn to balance acceptance and change.

Distress Tolerance

Distress tolerance skills will help you to tolerate difficult situations and emotional pain when the problems cannot be solved right away.

Emotional Regulation

You will learn how to recognise and manage your emotions, how to decrease your vulnerability to painful emotions, and change emotions you want to change or that do not fit the situation you are experiencing them in. You will also learn ways to create more positive emotions.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

These skills will help you to build and maintain positive relationships and effectively ask for what we would like and or to say no to others requests. You will also learn to assert your limits and problem solve relationship difficulties.

The group lasts for two hours with a break in the middle. The first half is focused on homework feedback. The second half is focused on learning a new skill. The group is set up as a learning environment with tables, pens, and notebooks. There will be activities to do, but the focus is on learning. It is not a typical talking group, where you are asked to shared personal information.

You can still be referred for DBT. You will either join a group where other young people might have a parent/carer present or you might join a group for young people only.

You would work with us for at least six months, and for some young people it may be up to a year.

There are four key parts to DBT: (1) DBT pre-treatment, (2) skills training group, (3) individual therapy sessions, and (4) telephone coaching.

DBT pre-treatment

You will be invited for four individual sessions to explain what DBT is in more detail, assess and strengthen your commitment to DBT (it is a big commitment so we want to make sure it is right for you, and the right time for you!) and agree on some goals. At the end of pre-treatment we decide with you whether you will come into the DBT programme.

If you come into the DBT programme you will then have:

Weekly individual DBT therapy sessions

These sessions will focus on supporting you to apply the skills you learn in the group to problems in your everyday life.

Weekly DBT skills training group

In the group you will learn the DBT skills mentioned in the first section to understand and manage your difficulties better. Parents/carers are also invited to support you to use the skills learned and to learn the skills themselves. The groups are described in more detail in the next section.

Telephone/text coaching

Coaching is available to support you in between the sessions and coach you on how to use DBT skills in your daily life.

Dialectical means two opposing ideas can be true at the same time. The image below shows how two people can see the same thing from a different point of view. While they have different views neither of them are wrong. DBT suggests that everything can be seen from another perspective and this is a skill we help you to practice, to help with emotions and relationships.

We offer an intense treatment package for both you and your parents to enable you to build a life worth living.

We help you do this by teaching you specific skills in:

• emotion regulation (reducing the intensity of emotions)

• mindfulness (staying in the moment to reduce impulsivity)

• interpersonal effectiveness (managing relationships)

• distress tolerance (managing strong emotions)

• and walking the middle path (balanced thinking and acting).

As well as learning these skills you will get support with thinking about how you can apply them to day-to-day situations in your life. In doing so you are less likely to need other ways to manage, such as self-harm or plans to end your life.