Borderline Personality Disorder,  DBT

DBT Treatment Developer Dr. Marsha Linehan Releases New Edition of Bestselling Skills Manual

Skills are aimed at helping individuals build lives that they themselves will experience as worth living.

DBT Treatment Developer Dr. Marsha Linehan Releases New Edition of Bestselling Skills Manual

The second edition of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy® Skills Training Manual adds more than 20 new skills for use with both clinical and non-clinical populations. Dr. Marsha M. Linehan has distilled more than two decades of research into this two-part volume designed for use inside and outside the therapy room.

October 20, 2014, marks the publication date of the long-awaited second edition of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT®) Skills Training Manual. The bestselling, first edition of Dr. Marsha Linehan’s DBT® Skills Training Manual has already helped countless people build lives worth living, particularly those at high risk for suicide and other severely disordered behaviors. The second edition distills decades of research on DBT and its skills training component into a two-part volume designed for use inside and outside the therapy room. The revised manual provides updates on many of the skills from the original 1993 publication and adds more than 20 new skills for use with clinical and non-clinical populations, as well as friends and family members of individuals with mental illness.

DBT is the gold standard psychological treatment for persons meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD). In the 21 years since Dr. Linehan published the first studies on the effectiveness of DBT, additional research has shown DBT and its skills training component to be effective with a variety of populations such as individuals with substance dependence, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), disorders of overcontrol, and eating disorders. DBT has a rich evidence base supporting its efficacy due to the efforts of collaborative researchers throughout the world. Recent data and clinical experience has shown them to be even more widely applicable, and DBT skills are now being used in non-clinical settings, such as school systems for both middle school and high school students, as well as in work places to improve life management skills.

“My main goal for people who come into therapy is that they get out of hell. And this is one of the main reasons that we teach skills, because skills are aimed at helping individuals build lives that they themselves will experience as worth living,” says Dr. Marsha Linehan.

Marsha M. Linehan, PhD, ABPP, is a professor of psychology and an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington. She is also the Director of the Behavioral Research Therapy Clinics, where she conducts research to develop and evaluate treatments for severe and complex mental disorders. She has an on-going clinical practice and is active in clinical consultation, supervision, and training of mental health professionals in the United States and Europe.

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