OVERVIEW

DBT with Suicidal Clients: 2-Video Series is organized by Psychotherapy.net.

Course Description:
Borderline, suicidal, and self-harming clients are some of the most challenging populations in our field—and mastery of key clinical strategies is essential for success. With a suicidal client under your watch, how do you assess risk, negotiate no-harm agreements, and manage borderline reactivity while staying grounded yourself and keeping your seat? This two-video set offers relief in the form of proven tools from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. In these compelling live demonstrations with DBT originator Marsha Linehan, you’ll find useful techniques as well as personal modeling to inform and enhance your skills.

Volume 1 of the set offers an in-depth look at common DBT assessment challenges. Linehan conducts two early-stage sessions with “client” Stacy (a student of hers who offers up one of her cases for role-play), in which she deftly confronts her “100 percent avoidance behavior” while also brokering agreements around her suicidality. Volume 2 offers an in-depth look at other common clinical challenges. Here, Linehan conducts a follow-up session with Stacy in which she deals with an empathic rupture while also negotiating around cutting behavior. In each video, you’ll observe how Linehan thoroughly assesses risk and ignores the trap of client obfuscation, yet also supports Stacy’s autonomy and challenges her to envision more adaptive coping skills.

Between assessing danger, managing reactivity, and negotiating agreements, this set offers the support you need to solidify your work with suicidal, emotionally dysregulated and borderline clients. You’ll be glad you got your hands on this essential resource.

By watching this video, you will:
• Understand common challenges DBT therapists face with suicidal clients.
• Discover core DBT interventions for assessing risk, managing reactivity, and negotiating agreements.
• Learn to use psychoeducation and directiveness in order to stay focused on key clinical tasks.

Learning Objectives:
• List the common challenges DBT therapists face with suicidal clients
• Discover core DBT interventions for assessing risk, managing reactivity, and negotiating agreements.
• Learn to use psychoeducation and directiveness in order to stay focused on key clinical tasks.