Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Training: DBT Essentials.
DBT Essentials is a 3-day course from the Association for Psychological Therapies (APT), a leading provider of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy training for professionals working in mental health and related fields in the USA. DBT Essentials is the benchmark for professionals who want an excellent introduction to DBT which will enable them to understand it and use it straight away. It is also the gateway to further DBT training including APT’s DBT Masterclass. The training is also approved by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Completion of the course results in 18 CE credits* and also gives you APT’s level one Accreditation in DBT, with the option of sitting an exam to obtain level two (free of charge) and from there through more study right up to APT's DBT Masterclass and level four Accreditation.
Founded in 1981, APT has grown to become a trusted source of gold-standard training, from introductory through to masterclass level. Over 150,000 mental health professionals have attended APT’s post-qualification courses, commissioned by numerous healthcare systems, hospitals, and providers.
APT’s DBT training uniquely combines built-in APT Accreditation with automatic access to our renowned post-course resources to help you support your clients. It is available for both teams and individuals, face-to-face or online, and can also count towards (a) the Extended Training in DBT course, (b) The APT Diploma in Psychological Therapies or (c) The APT Diploma for working in Secure Psychiatric and Forensic Settings.
Executive Summary:
Put at its simplest, DBT hinges on teaching important life and psychological skills to those who need them, and then supporting them in applying those skills in real life. Both elements can sometimes be challenging and DBT has developed to overcome those challenges.
DBT Essentials covers the delivery of effective DBT at its most relevant, including: impulsivity, lack of emotional control, interpersonal problems, high risk behaviours, including suicidal behavior and non-suicidal self-injury.
Who should attend this DBT course?
This is an ‘introductory’ course to DBT and people who attend normally fall into one of two categories:
1. Professionals who see patients in 1:1 treatment settings, have a significant degree of clinical skill, and wish to add DBT techniques to their repertoire.
2. 'Whole teams' (either in inpatient or community settings) seeking to develop a common approach to DBT and a full DBT Service.
The professional affiliations of people attending our DBT training include: mental health/psychiatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and others.
This course covers a great deal:
OVERARCHING THEORY AND KNOWLEDGE.
The 4 'modes' (key components) of DBT.
- Skills development groups, where patients learn important life skills.
- 1:1 sessions where patients meet with their individual therapist to problem solve, maintain motivation, and more.
- Telephone support, where therapist and patient have telephone communication to help them apply the new skills they learn even in crisis situations.
- Consultation Meetings. Where all the professionals involved in providing DBT get together to discuss any current issues, to support each other and ensure quality control.
- What to do if you are providing DBT single handed and cannot provide all the components as listed above.
Linehan's Biosocial model.
- What it is.
- Why it is important.
- How we operationalize it in therapy.
Higher order skills of DBT.
- How to order competing priorities: deciding which of several problems to tackle first.
- Life-threatening behaviours, therapy-threatening behaviours, and behaviours that interfere with the quality of life.
- The patient-therapist agreement - our role in it.
- Assumptions we can make about the patient - and those we can't.
THERAPIST KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS MAINLY USED IN 1:1 SESSIONS:
Validation.
- Definition of validation, and why it is important.
- How validation links to Linehan's Biosocial model.
- The implication of invalidating environments for a child, and later for the adult.
- Different ways of validating.
Metaphors.
- How metaphors work and why we should use them.
- 6 Examples of metaphors.
- 4 Metaphors you can use repeatedly, for common problem situations.
- General principles of metaphors, including visual metaphors.
Relentless problem solving.
- Problem solving attitude and problem solving strategy, the usefulness of both.
- The five stage problem solving strategy.
- Forms for clients (and you) to use with problem solving.
- Problem solving exercise.
Contingency management.
- Differential reinforcement in a clinical setting.
- The nature of contingency management and how it interacts with the conscious or unconscious motivations of the client.
- Behavioral analysis, especially as a response to severe behavior such as parasuicidal behaviour.
- Chain analysis and solution analysis.
AN EXTENDED OVERVIEW OF THE SKILLS TAUGHT TO CLIENTS IN GROUPS
Emotion-regulation.
- The skills necessary to effectively regulate your emotions.
- Biological elements such as: sleep, exercise, illnesses, circadian rhythm.
- Specific multi-point strategies and the acronyms to remember them.
Interpersonal effectiveness.
- Frequent interpersonal issues, and strategies to respond to them.
- Avoiding quarrels and maintaining relationships.
- Appropriate assertiveness and strategies for expressing it.
Core Mindfulness skills.
- A definition and description of mindfulness and the best purposes it can fulfil.
- Mindfulness and its role in balancing 'the emotional mind' with 'the reasonable mind' to achieve 'the wise mind'.
- The skills of mindfulness.
Distress tolerance.
- 'Distraction behaviours' that may be used to counteract and neutralize distress.
- 'Beyond distraction': steering the thought processes.
- 'Radical' distress tolerance: doing nothing. How to do nothing: the fact of this turning out to be an effective approach for many people, and the theory behind it.
Walking the Middle Path
- What this means, why it is important.
- An overview of some of the exercises involved.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course, the learner will be able to:
- Explain the history and purpose of the DBT approach and be able to name and describe the key concept of the ‘wise mind’.
- Describe how problem solving and change strategies are balanced dialectically by the use of validation strategies and how this fits with Linehan’s ‘Biosocial Model’.
- Discuss why validation is important in the DBT approach and what techniques can be used with patients.
- Demonstrate the DBT technique of ‘Chaining’ and ‘Chain Analysis’ techniques.
- List techniques to help patients with emotional dysregulation with problem solving.
- Discuss the importance of setting contingency management plans with their patients and be able to guide their patients in cost-benefit analysis.
- Explain the importance of positive reinforcement in the DBT approach and why the core ethos of “watering the flowers, not the weeds” in therapy helps move patients towards positive behaviour.
- Identify the core components of a DBT programme and the key skills that patients will learn through participating in the programme.
- Compile the techniques necessary to then be able to help patients develop the key DBT skills of mindfulness, Interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotion regulation skills, distress tolerance skills, and walking the middle path.
What you receive as a result of attending APT's DBT training:
All delegates are registered at APT as having attended the course, and receive a certificate to acknowledge their attendance, registration, and APT-Accreditation at the appropriate level. As a bona fide APT event, this course automatically has accreditation from The Association for Psychological Therapies. This accreditation is given weight by the fact of over 150,000 professionals having attended APT training.
Upon completion of the 3-day course, you receive Level 1 APT Accreditation in DBT.
You are also entitled to sit an online exam to uprate your APT-accreditation in DBT to Level 2.
CE Credits from the APA:
*The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for Psychologists. The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
Upon completion of this course you can apply for CE certification for an additional cost of $20 USD (for training purchased after 08/14/2023).
Requirements for completion: To be awarded CE credits for this course 100% attendance is required for live training. For the 'online anytime' (self-paced) version, you are required to complete the course in full and complete a multiple choice exam whereby a pass marks of 80% is required (failure on the third attempt would result in having to go back through the content again).
Note: there may be other professional licensing boards that accept CE credits earned from APA-approved sponsors. Because CE regulations vary by state and profession, we recommend that participants check with their state licensing board to inquire whether credits will be accepted for renewal of licensure. We do not have any authority over whether credits earned will be accepted, as this authority rests with the state licensing boards.
Instructor credentials and endorsements:
Note, all APT tutors are consultant clinical psychologists (or similar) and have not received any commercial support for this program or its contents and will not receive any commercial support prior to or during this program. Similarly, no benefit of endorsements have been received.
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DBT Courses and Resources
Teaching the Life Skills at the heart of DBT™ ❯
APT's Accreditation of DBT Practitioners ❯
Live Feedback Ratings.
Every delegate rates our courses for presentation and relevance and the averages below update automatically as each new course runs.
These live results also power APT’s acclaimed Accreditation System — so widely valued because it is evidence-based, drawing directly on the real-time ratings of professionals who have completed the training.
Face-to-Face*
Presentation:
Relevance:
Online Live*
Presentation:
Relevance:
Online Anytime**
Overall Rating:
* Feedback taken from the last 10 runnings of this course (each course has around 15 people attending).
** Feedback taken from the last 20 people completing the course. Delegates give a single overall rating to anytime courses.
Reviews.
APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments the DBT Essentials course has received.
"I rarely get anything out of the training that I attend. I can honestly say this course has been an epiphany. I think this is essential training for anybody working in a mental health setting."
"The DBT Essentials course delivered to my team over the three days was exceptional. The pace was well judged, the material presented was relevant and detailed and the style of the workshops was lively and collaborative. My team all remarked on how quickly the time went and how interesting and relevant the exercises were. The three days provided us with an enjoyable shared experience which was great for team morale as well as offering valuable skills."
