Overview of Dialectical Behavior Therapy

In this chapter we provide an overview of standard outpatient dialectical behavior ther-apy (DBT) and its evidence base. Our purpose is to describe DBT in enough detail to help you determine whether adopting DBT will meet the needs of your setting or population. This chapter also serves as an anchor and reference point on the standard outpatient model of DBT so that you can easily compare and contrast it with variations of DBT described in subsequent chapters. This chapter is also meant to be one you could share with colleagues as an introduction to DBT. DBT in a Nutshell DBT is a cognitive-behavioral treatment originally developed by Marsha M. Linehan, PhD, as a treatment for chronically suicidal individuals, and first validated with suicidal women who met criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Those with BPD rep-resent 14–20 % of inpatients (Widiger & Frances, 1989; Widiger & Weissman, 1991)