Comprehensive Workshop in Dialectical Behavior Therapy:
Part 2

Sunday, July 09, 2023, 11:00 AM EDT

$0.00 Charles Robert Swenson, M.D.

July 9-13, 2023

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) helps individuals with complex, chronic, and utterly painful problems to find their way out of misery and build lives worth living. This Intensive Workshop equips therapists with the knowledge and behavioral skill sets needed to help clients on such a journey! Whether you are already a member or planning to join an established DBT Consultation team, or hoping to establish a new team and program, join instructor Charles Swenson, MD, and Kathryn Patrick, LCSW, for this dynamic; intensive workshop, and leave well-prepared for the work ahead!

The workshop is conducted in two five-day sessions, Part 1 and Part 2, separated by five months. During Part 1, the instructors will teach theory, structuring, and practice of DBT in-depth, using lectures, videotapes, role-play demonstrations, participant exercises, and deliberate practices. During the interval between Parts 1 and 2, participants will complete practice assignments and a multiple-choice exam to consolidate their knowledge bases; to design, begin to implement, or strengthen their DBT programs; to conceptualize cases in DBT terms; and to engage in the use of DBT skills and treatment strategies. During the five-month interval, the instructors will interact with individuals and teams to help with program development, case questions, and assistance with the homework assignment as needed. During Part 2, teams and individuals will present their work and receive consultations on their programs and cases. At this point, the principles and details of adapting DBT to specific populations and treatment contexts will also be addressed. Part 2 will involve further teaching and demonstration of DBT strategies, with multiple opportunities for participants to practice the treatment with feedback.

About the Presenter

Charlie Swenson, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at University of Massachusetts Medical School, attended Harvard College and Yale Medical School. He trained in psychiatry at Yale University and trained in psychoanalysis in New Haven, Connecticut. He directed long term inpatient and day treatment programs for individuals with borderline disorders from 1982 to 1996 for New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York, including the development of a DBT inpatient program. He moved to Massachusetts in 1996 and accepted a faculty position at University of Massachusetts Medical School. He served as the Medical Director and Senior Psychiatrist of the Department of Mental Health in Western Massachusetts from 1997 to 2010. Since 1993 Dr. Swenson has conducted DBT, supervised DBT, implemented DBT, written about the topic, and trained thousands of others in DBT. He has been in private practice throughout his career, seeing adults, families, and adolescents in treatment. He has published more than twenty articles and chapters about DBT and the treatment of borderline disorders, and in 2016 published a book, DBT Principles in Action: Change, Acceptance, and Dialectics (Guilford Press). Charlie lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, has a wife, Meredith Gould, who is a clinical psychologist, two boys, ages 23 and 27, and two dogs. In his private practice he teaches skills training groups and integrates skills into individual therapy. He has posted more than 80 1-hour podcasts about the uses of DBT to face life’s adversities. It is called To Hell and Back and can be found where podcasts are found and on his website, www.charlieswenson.com

These workshops offer 35 Live Interactive Continuing Education Credits

Learning Objectives:

● Demonstrate the mastery of DBT’s knowledge base

● Describe all DBT skills according to the skills training manual

● Conduct a DBT skills training group, managing problems that arise in the group

● Demonstrate effective leadership and participation of a DBT consultation team meeting

● Identify, assess, and address problems in the functioning of the consultation team, using DBT strategies to solve them

● Apply DBT’s targets and strategies in telephone coaching

● Demonstrate the use of DBT’s ‘observing limits’ strategy in order to preserve one’s own effective functioning and to prevent burnout

● Demonstrate the use of DBT’s contingency procedures to maintain and motivate effective functioning in therapy sessions and skills training groups

● Demonstrate the use of cognitive modification procedures during therapy sessions

● Demonstrate how to incorporate skills training procedures into a DBT therapy session

● Demonstrate the use of validation levels and strategies to help the patient regulate emotions and continue to problem-solve

● Demonstrate the use of dialectical strategies to navigate and transform challenging moments in therapy

● Conduct behavioral chain analysis for the assessment and treatment of problem behaviors

● Demonstrate how to shift back and forth between the use of behavioral chain analysis and the use of DBT’s change procedures

● Demonstrate how to convert the case conceptualization into a treatment plan

● Formulate plans to evaluate one’s DBT program or practice

● List the research findings supporting DBT as an evidence-based treatment for disorders of emotional dys-regulation;

● Demonstrate how the therapist reviews a diary card (self-monitoring tool) with the patient, noting the active treatment targets, and sets a prioritized treatment agenda for each session

● List the five functions of comprehensive DBT treatment, the various treatment modes that subserve those functions, and how these are modified in adaptations of DBT to different clinical populations and treatment contexts

● Demonstrate the practice of commitment strategies in DBT to secure a stronger commitment from the patient

● Demonstrate the use of a behavioral chain analysis to assess the controlling variables of a problem behavior in a session