5-day Foundational training

The 5-day Foundational training DBT of Dialexis is a traning for individuals who want to perform DBT and are willing to to join an existing and weekly active DBT consultation team. The health professionals who register for this training are already acquainted with the method via the DBT manual for borderline personality disorders, the DBT skills training manual, or via a 1-day or 3-day Introduction course.

In other words, we focus individuals who have made an considered choice to perform DBT.

All health professionals, who meet every week to support each other in carrying out DBT. There are DBT teams that are united across departments or organizations to find that support from each other. Individual participants who are members of an existing DBT team are referred to the 5-day foundational training, a training which we organize in collaboration with RINO Utrecht (in Dutch).

All health professionals who can take on a role as individual therapist or skills trainer are welcome. In the Netherlands and Belgium, DBT is usually implemented in multidisciplinary teams, in which different basic disciplines and educations are represented. To participate in the 5-day Foundational training, participants posses basic knowledge of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Furthermore, this offer is high in demand. We rely on the health professionals to have decided for themselves that they are able and willing to devote time and energy to implement DBT.

During the training week, consisting of five one-day meetings, the competences for implementing DBT will be practiced. The method emphasis on presentation, demonstration and role play. After this week, the participants can put into practice what they have learned and practiced within their consultation team.

Following this 5-day Foundational Training, the 6-day Follow-up Basic training can be followed later on, to be trained in the implementation of the DGT program and in preparation for any DBT certification. If the participant wants to set up a new DBT program, it is advised to follow the 10-day Intensive Training with two colleagues.

Learning objectives

• Function, structure and course of a consultation team
• Basic principles of DBT: scientific thinking, acceptance and dialectical philosophy
• Research into the effectiveness and mechanisms of DBT
• Principles about clients, practitioners and treatment
• Biosocial theory and the skills model
• Case conceptualization in DBT
• Stages in the therapeutic process; patients with severe emotion regulation problems
• Function of the program components by means of Linehan’s theory
• Life goals of a client, and primary and secondary treatment goals in DBT
• From complex problems to specific and analysable problem behaviour
• Core strategies in DBT: problem solving, validation, dialectics
• Getting to the core of the situation in the first conversation
• Structure and process of the pretreatment, individual therapy and special sessions
• Structure, process and content of the skills training
• Consultation-to-the-client principle in case management
• Suicide risk assessment and management for chronically suicidal target groups
• Procedures to intervene during an acute,000000 suicidal crisis
• Dealing effectively with therapy limiting behavior and stubbornness
• Applying cognitive modification, informal exposure and contingency management in DBT
• Balancing reciprocal and irreversible communication
• Strategies for coaching between sessions
• Implementing DBT as an individual, team and organization