Who Can Benefit from Dialectical Behavior Therapy?

Image by orangeacidI'm often asked who can benefit from dialectical behavior therapy or DBT.

Lots of different people can!

DBT has now been adapted to help many different kinds of people or patient populations. Of course DBT has never been sold as an easy or fast cure-all but here's a short list of the kinds of people who might be helped by a dialectical behavior therapy treatment program or by working with a therapist who has been trained in DBT:

• people who have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder or who have traits of BPD
• families of individuals with borderline personality disorder
• people who are doing the best they can and need better coping strategies to be more effective
• individuals who have suicidal feelings or those who have made suicide attempts in the past
• people who engage in self-injury or self-harming behaviors
• anyone who feels like the aren't making any progress towards their personal, academic, and professional goals because of rapidly-changing or unpredictable emotions
• individuals living with black-and-white or rigid thinking

If you are interested in learning more about DBT, I'd love to hear from you.