Abstract
It’s estimated that between 13 and 45 percent of adolescents use self-harm as a coping skill (Choate 2012). Dialectical Behavior Therapy, more commonly referred to as DBT, was invented by Dr. Marsha Linehan to help (primarily) women who struggled with emotion regulation, suicidal thoughts, and self-harming behavior (Choate, 2012; Feigenbaum et al., 2012; Rizvi et al., 2013). Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) was originally adapted for work with adolescents by Miller and colleagues in 1997 (Grooves et al. 2012). In this adaptation, Miller et al. emphasized the importance of adolescent caregivers’ involvement in treatment and learning the DBT skills. Caregivers are supposed to learn the DBT skills so they can utilize the skills themselves and be models for their adolescents, encourage their adolescents to utilize the skills appropriately outside of therapy sessions, and utilize the skills in handling interactions between them and the adolescent (Miller et al., 2002; Choate, 2012; Neece et al., 2013).This presentation looks at the results of a pre and post assessment of parents’ DBT skills use after completing a 12 week DBT skills group. The research design is a correlational study of the pre and post assessment data. Caregivers will be given the DBT-Ways of Coping Checklist (DBT-WCCL) to measure their use of DBT skills. The DBT-WCCL is a psychometrically sound instrument developed by Necsiu, Rizvi, Vitaliano, Lynch, and Linehan 2010, to assess the use of DBT skills. It is hypothesized that caregivers’ post DBT-WCCL scores will indicate more use of DBT skills than the pre assessment scores.
