Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Children

What is DBT-C?

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for pre-adolescent children (DBT-C) is an intervention developed to treat children with severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation developed by Francheska Perepletchikova, PhD, DBT-Linehan Board Certified Clinician. It has been adapted from standard model DBT for adults. DBT-C adds an extensive parent training component to the model that emphasizes many of the standard adult DBT skills and didactics into the curriculum. However, DBT-C teaches parents all the skills the child learns plus effective contingency management and validation techniques.

What are the Goals of DBT-C?

The main goals of DBT-C are to:

Teach parents how to create validating and change ready environment to help them become coaches for their child during treatment and after therapy is completed
Teach parents and their children effective coping and problem-solving skills
Help parents instill in their children senses of self-love, safety and belonging.

In DBT-C the immediate goal is focusing on helping the parents create a change-ready environment. The target hierarchy is divided into subcategories which include:

Decrease current severe psychopathology and risk of psychopathology in the future
Decrease life threatening behaviors of the child
Decrease therapy destroying behaviors of the child
Decrease therapy interfering behaviors of the parents
Improve parental emotion regulation
Teach effective parenting techniques
Target the parent-child relationship
Improve the parent-child relationship
Target the child’s presenting quality of life and therapy interfering behaviors
Decrease risky, unsafe, and aggressive behaviors
Decrease quality of life interfering behaviors, provide skills training
Decrease therapy-interfering behavior of a child

What Should We Expect with DBT-C?

Similar to standard DBT, DBT-C treatment services consist of weekly co-parenting, weekly skills training, phone coaching, and DBT consultation team.

To learn more about DBT-C and to see if you and your child are a good fit, please call us at 757-340-6100.

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If you or a loved one is in need of our services, please reach out to us today.