Comprehensive DBT Program
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment that is highly effective for conditions involving emotional or behavioral dysregulation. It has become the standard of care for the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder and can be instrumental in the treatment of many other conditions, including addictive disorders, depression, trauma-related disorders, and eating disorders.
DBT helps patients achieve stability and build resilience through the development of the skills necessary to regulate emotions, tolerate distress, and communicate effectively.
Comprehensive DBT is the highest quality form of DBT in which all of the clinicians have received specialized, intensive training and the program itself adheres to specific methods and protocols that ensure the integrity of the model.
While DBT has become widely available, most programs and therapists offering DBT provide “DBT informed” therapy rather than true, evidence-based Comprehensive DBT.
Camden Center is proud to offer Comprehensive DBT provided by highly trained DBT clinicians with years of experience in this treatment.
Expertise in Comprehensive DBT
In addition to having built one of the nation’s most experienced Comprehensive DBT teams, Camden Center has also played a significant role in the promotion of quality DBT within the field, having provided multiple intensive DBT training workshops in partnership with Behavioral Tech, the organization founded by the creator of DBT, Marsha Linehan.
These multi-day intensive training workshops have helped other treatment centers and therapist groups from around the world learn how to provide evidence-based, Comprehensive DBT.
Camden Center is also one of the only treatment centers in the country that provides Comprehensive DBT in addition to other forms of treatment, including medical, somatic, and psychotherapeutic treatment modalities.
Normally, centers that offer Comprehensive DBT do not offer other types of treatment; however, at Camden Center, patients at all levels of care have access to both high-quality Comprehensive DBT as well as many other therapeutic modalities.
This can be particularly useful for patients with trauma-related conditions who often benefit from DBT for stabilization prior to initiating other forms of trauma therapy.
DBT SKILLS
Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a skills-based therapeutic approach that teaches patients strategies and skills for creating and maintaining an improved quality of life.
DBT uses four modules to help patients master skills in the following areas:
- Mindfulness
- Distress tolerance
- Emotion regulation
- Interpersonal effectiveness
In addition to these core elements, patients in Camden Center’s Comprehensive DBT Program will typically also have other components included in their personalized treatment plan, including psychiatry, primary medical care, integrative medicine, yoga, reintegration therapy, therapeutic massage, and nutritional work with a dietician.
DBT can be a highly effective tool in stabilizing and empowering patients, providing a concrete, powerful foundation for meaningful change and long-lasting recovery.
ABOUT CAMDEN CENTER’S COMPREHENSIVE DBT PROGRAM
Camden Center’s Comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program is an interactive, experiential, and intensive program that was created to help patients build resilience and become skilled at managing their emotions, behaviors, and relationships with others. Our trauma focused DBT Program supports individuals struggling with disorders of emotion regulation, including mood disorders, addiction behaviors, borderline personality disorder, suicidal and self-harm behaviors, disordered eating, and complex trauma.
The skills developed through DBT are useful for anyone, but can be lifesaving for individuals suffering from the overwhelming distress associated with many mental health and addictive disorders.
For this reason, many Camden Center patients participate in our Comprehensive DBT Program, particularly at the beginning of treatment when symptoms are most acute. The stability and resilience gained from Comprehensive DBT then often serves as a foundation for subsequent work at Camden Center using other psychotherapeutic modalities.
OUR APPROACH TO DBT
Patients at Camden Center receive innovative, evidence-based treatment for disorders of emotion regulation by Linehan-trained experts in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, including Comprehensive DBT, DBT Couples and Family Therapy, and Trauma Specific Applications including DBT PE (Prolonged Exposure) and DBT PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Treatment is administered by a diverse team of expert clinicians in DBT, in addition to experts across other medical, integrative, psychotherapeutic, somatic, and nutritional modalities that work synergistically with DBT. As part of their individualized care, each patient receives a unique clinical team assembled to meet their specific needs and goals. Every patient’s treatment plan is re-evaluated weekly, with changes made collaboratively in real time based on feedback and progress. We utilize a flexible approach to meet the person where they are at and to allow for individualized pacing.
PHILOSOPHY AND FRAMEWORK
Emotion sensitivity is a temperament style that includes the tendency to feel deeply, react strongly, and experience the aftereffects of emotions for a longer period. For emotionally sensitive individuals, self-harm, suicidal, and addictive behaviors can develop as compensatory coping mechanisms to manage chronic emotional pain resulting from an interplay of both biological factors and a social environment that is over-taxed and struggling to effectively understand, support, and champion the individual.
Camden Center’s Comprehensive DBT program is designed to help individuals who have been struggling to manage overwhelming emotions learn more effective ways of coping, and to make needed changes in their lives. Individuals learn specific tools to nonjudgmentally relate to and then channel their expression of emotions, with the aim of moving towards their goals and living by their values.
Camden Center DBT therapists support individuals to develop a picture of their “Life Worth Living” and move toward that vision through a multi-system process. This process supports individuals to develop healthier behaviors related to stressors, trauma cues, and emotionally prompting events so that they may make incremental progress toward larger relational and personal life goals.
Comprehensive DBT has four components: Skills Training, Individual DBT Sessions, Phone Coaching, and a Provider Consultation Team. Daily skills groups cover the four standard skill areas: Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Mindfulness, and are designed to be completed in a revolving four-week cycle, with participants frequently repeating a second cycle to consolidate and deepen skills practice.
In addition, patients engage in twice-weekly individual DBT sessions with a primary therapist involving use of a Diary Card and Chain and Solution Analysis to develop awareness of old, ineffective behavior patterns and build newer, healthier behaviors. Phone coaching with the primary therapist is available between sessions to help patients practice and effectively implement skills they are learning in real time.
These DBT-focused interventions are supplemented with integrative care across a wide array of domains, including psychiatry, integrative medicine, nutrition, somatic work, acupuncture and massage, movement, acceptance and commitment therapy, compassion focused treatment, recovery, reintegration, and other synergistic modalities.
DBT providers at Camden have specialty skills in application of DBT, including DBT for Substance Use Disorders (DBT SUD), DBT in support of Bipolar Disorder, DBT for Trauma-Based Disorders, and DBT Couples and Family Therapy.
COUPLES AND FAMILY DBT
Couples and Family DBT, based on Alan Fruzzetti’s Family Connections approach, supports parents, partners, and other family members in understanding how emotion dysregulation and compensatory coping has developed and gives family members tools to be part of the solution.
The patient and their family meet separately for a DBT Family Assessment to elicit history and collaborative goals. Couples and family sessions may be conducted with the family alone or together with the patient, and are focused on shifting targeted patterns of interaction in line with specific patient and family goals.
TRAUMA FOCUSED DBT
Camden Center views all phases of DBT as incorporating a trauma lens, with early treatment phases building stabilization, skillful coping under stress, and emotion tolerance. Depending on length of stay, presentation, and goals, patients may collaboratively elect to engage in Phase II DBT Trauma work, more directly treating underlying PTSD, Complex PTSD, and/or attachment trauma through cutting-edge exposure-centered integrative approaches, including DBT PE and DBT PTSD.
For many patients with core underlying trauma that results in dysregulated emotions and behaviors, individuals have either not had the opportunity to address trauma due to the exclusive focus on high-risk behaviors, have attempted trauma work only to be overwhelmed and to see risky behaviors increase, or have stopped trauma treatment to prioritize stabilization.
At Camden Center, treatment using DBT PE and DBT PTSD allow patients to address core underlying trauma while simultaneously attending to acute emotional distress, dissociation, and behavioral urges toward old patterns of coping that frequently arise when initiating trauma-focused work. Our providers have specialty training in Melanie Harned’s DBT PE and Martin Bohus’s DBT PTSD specifically designed to address co-occurring Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD and Complex Trauma, respectively.
Find out more about Camden Center’s Comprehensive DBT Program in Los Angeles and San Francisco by calling our admissions department or contacting us online today.