Dialectical Behavior Therapy with Suicidal Adolescents

Filling a tremendous need, this highly practical book adapts the proven techniques of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to treatment of multi-problem adolescents at highest risk for suicidal behaviour and self-injury. The authors are master clinicians who take the reader step-by-step through understanding and assessing severe emotional dysregulation in teens and implementing individual, family, and group-based interventions.

Insightful guidance on everything from orientation to termination is enlivened by case illustrations and sample dialogues.

Appendices feature:

• 30 mindfulness exercises as well as lecture notes
• 12 reproducible handouts for "Walking the Middle Path," a new DBT skills training module for adolescents and their families.

Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print these handouts and several other tools from the book in a convenient 8½" x 11" size.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Charles R. Swenson

Introduction

1. Suicidal Behaviors in Adolescents: Who Is Most at Risk?
2. What Do We Know about Effective Treatments for Suicidal Adolescents?
3. Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Treatment Stages, Primary Targets, and Strategies
4. DBT Program Structure: Functions and Modes
5. Dialectical Dilemmas for Adolescents: Addressing Secondary Targets
6. Assessing Adolescents: Suicide Risk, Diagnosis, and Treatment Feasibility
7. Orienting Adolescents and Families to Treatment and Obtaining Commitment
8. Individual Therapy with Adolescents
9. Including Families in Treatment
10. Skills Training with Adolescents
11. Assessing Progress, Running a Graduate Group, and Terminating Treatment
12. Program Issues

Appendix A. Mindfulness Exercises for Adolescents

Appendix B. Walking the Middle Path Skills: Lecture and Discussion Points

Appendix C. Handouts for Walking the Middle Path Skills