CE for Therapists
Ever heard of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)? Think again. While DBT was originally developed as a treatment for suicidal and borderline personality disordered patients (Linehan, 1993), it has been expanded and revised as a treatment modality appropriate to most of those in acute emotional pain. Think about your practice: who comes most frequently for treatment? People in high emotional pain, regardless of diagnosis. It may be depression, anxiety, interpersonal problems, impulse control problems (gambling, sex, anger, self-abuse, or substance dependence), issues with identity and boundaries (personality disorder issues), eating disorders, or a combination of any of the above. While we have been trained by DSM-IV to think about our patients in terms of diagnosis (for good research and epidemiological reasons), perhaps the rigid boundaries of diagnostic nomenclature are less relevant to treatment programs and strategies. Why? Because most people in acute emotional pain have comorbid problems and issues. There is not one problem or disorder, there are many. The Center for Dialectical Behavior Therapy offers programs to treat symptom clusters, like inability to experience pleasure, self-hatred, shame, self-perpetuating feeling and thinking patterns, obsessiveness, and hopelessness. These workshops differ from others being offered on DBT because they do not deal particularly with Borderline Personality Disorder. At its core DBT offers alternatives to emotional and experiential avoidance, emotional escape strategies, lack of meaning in one’s life, and getting “stuck” in strategies that simply do not bring the person closer to their own wants and historical narrative. DBT is thus an entirely new theoretical strategy to treatment. The “revised” DBT gives honor to psychoanalytic concepts of defense mechanisms, compromise formation, and repression, without accepting the centrality of sexuality and psychosexual stages of development (or necessarily the primacy of the unconscious and nebulous theories of a Freudian dynamic psychology). It honors humanistic psychology’s values of respect, congruence, validation, and the critical importance of the psychotherapeutic relationship. It accepts the gestalt and Jungian notions of identifying the “dark side” of our nature by embracing dialectic analysis as a central issue within the therapeutic process. It also accepts the proven theories of behavior therapy, that all behavioral processes occur within a context that is specific and individualized. Moreover, the new DBT is spiritual in that it requests that people look beyond themselves, to the moral and meaningful levels of analysis, without demanding belief in God or religion. DBT is thus a new eclecticism that is theory-driven and empirically based. DBT can improve your patient outcomes, increase your confidence in the strategies and techniques that you employ with your patients, and offer a map of the psychotherapeutic process that is powerful and robust. While the patient must ultimately travail the territory that the map provides, DBT offers a comprehensive synthesis of what all of the “masters” of psychotherapy have been telling us for decades. But it does so in such specific yet flexible ways that the therapist has a map without feeling like a technician. And the patient feels understood in their uniqueness, validated for their wants and needs and with a map to fulfill them. This website outlines three workshops currently being offered: Treatment of Comorbid Depression and Anxiety (an introductory workshop that outlines DBT treatment theory and process, with the most common problems presenting in private practice settings), Intermediate DBT (a workshop for people who have experience in delivering DBT to suicidal or borderline patients (or who have taken introductory workshops on DBT before), but who wish to expand the use of DBT to other patient populations), and the DBT Home Learning Course (that allows 20 hours of review of DBT theory, research, and practice principles from reading a textbook and taking multiple-choice tests). These workshops will expand your therapeutic skills in powerful ways because it offers a method of conceptualizing problems similar to how most people view their issues: emotionally-driven, existential, secretive, demoralizing, and nonspecific. DBT returns the role of emotions as a central issue of the psychotherapeutic process, returns meaning-making as a central function of psychotherapy, and yet increases the specificity of interventions to offer real rather than only moral support for those in acute emotional pain. Introduction to DBT: Treatment of Comorbid Depression and AnxietyThis 6 hour accredited DBT workshop will review the underlying theory and process of DBT, as well as apply these principles to the most common emotional disorders presented in private practice settings: depression and anxiety. DBT is effective with persons who present with high emotional sensitivity (expressive or blunted), slow return to emotional baseline following stressors, and inability to tolerate their feelings. Registration fee includes the Depressed & Anxious book! Cost: $185 14 days prior to workshop date. $200 13 – 3 days prior to workshop date. $250 on-site registration. Refunds: 100% 45 days prior to workshop date. 80% 44 – 30 days prior to workshop date. 50% 29 – 5 day(s) prior to workshop date. 0% 4 - workshop date or thereafter. Workshop Facilitator: All workshops will be lead by Thomas Marra, Ph.D., author both of Depressed & Anxious: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Workbook (for patient use) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy in Private Practice: A Practical & Comprehensive Guide (for professional use). He is the founder and Director of an inpatient unit based solely on DBT principles, and has been using DBT in inpatient, partial hospital, and outpatient practices for over 10 years. Intermediate DBT WorkshopThis accredited 14-hour Intermediate DBT Workshop is designed to improve your skills at dialectic analysis of patient problems, learn appropriate ways to validate the patient’s perspective while concurrently requesting behavioral change, and how to stay dialectical while accepting the patient’s narrative of their problem presentation. This workshop is 60% practice and 40% presentation of theory, and is designed for those who already have familiarity with DBT concepts (but perhaps not with how to apply those concepts to broad-based patient problems frequently found in practice). All workshops are 9 am – 5 pm, beginning on Friday at 9 am and ending on Saturday at 5 pm (two days, 7 hours each day; you must attend both days for credit.) Cost: $325 14 days prior to workshop date. $375 13 – 3 days prior to workshop date. $400 on-site registration. Refunds: 100% 45 days prior to workshop date. 80% 44 – 30 days prior to workshop date. 50% 29 – 5 day(s) prior to workshop date. 0% 4 - workshop date or thereafter. Upcoming WorkshopsDBT Home Learning CourseEarn up to 20 units of accredited CE at home, on your own schedule. The course reviews theory, technique, and practice of DBT with a variety (mood, anxiety, impulse control, addictive, personality, eating, and comorbid diagnoses) of acute mental disorders. This course includes the textbook Dialectical Behavior Therapy in Private Practice: A Practical & Comprehensive Guide, with 266 pages with almost 300 scientific and professional references to the extant literature, and the first book to extend DBT theory and technology beyond suicidal and borderline pathologies. Major goals include: how DBT is similar to (and different from) all other major schools of psychology, how the assumptions of DBT are similar to (and different from) traditional cognitive-behavior therapy, how emotion regulatory functions predict most major disorders (and how to treat them), review of the biological, psychological, and neurological disorders involved in major mental disorders, how to balance acceptance with change technologies, the role of comorbidity in treatment strategies, and how to teach psychosocial skills (distress tolerance, emotion regulation, mindfulness, meaning making, and strategic behavior). The emphasis is on private practice settings, with patients most likely to present to an independent practitioner. Credit is based on reading chapters within the textbook, and correctly answering multiple-choice questions based upon the content. The course includes a CD that includes PowerPoint® presentations to allow the independent practitioner to lead psychosocial skills groups based on the DBT model of treatment in their own offices. Not from California? The Center for Dialectical Behavior Therapy is accredited to offer continuing education credit in California only. However, some states do not legally mandate that professisonal continuing education be registered in their specific state. It is up to you to determine if your licensing board will accept our certificate of completion for credit. Cost: $245 (includes textbook, CD, tests, and Certificate of Completion for credits for psychologist, MTF, LCSW, and psychiatric RN providers). Location and Time: All course materials will be mailed to you. You must complete all tests within one year in order to obtain credit. Refund Policy: Once course materials are mailed to you, no refunds will be provided.
To enroll in any workshop, simply press the "back" button on your browser and click the "Enroll" button. You may order either the patient workbook or the professional textbook at www.newharbinger.com and use the search function for "Marra." The patient workbook is included in the registration fee for the Introductory workshop. Mailing List Information: The Center for DBT will no longer be mailing brochures to all California licensees. If you wish to remain on our mailing list, please fax, mail, or e-mail us your name, license number, address, and e-mail address to: Center for Dialectical Behavior Therapy, 550 Wave Street, Suite 4, Monterey CA 93940 (FAX 831-646-1317) or marra@depressedandanxious.com. No workshops other than those listed in this website will be offered in 2006 |
