Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is cutting edge mental health care. Its goals are to teach people skills to cope with stress, regulate their emotions and improve interpersonal relationships. DBT strategies can be taught to students as a preventative measure to help them acquire behavior, social, and emotional skills that enable them to better succeed in and outside of school.

In this course, our objective will be to give participants a rigorous introduction to Dialectical Behavior Therapy and where it can be used in the classroom, with one on ones with students, and in psychotherapy sessions. There will be something for everybody. Key skills will include mindfulness, understanding emotion dysregulation, crisis management, and bringing a child to a more regulated state.

This training will mainly target the 5th grade students all the way to High School aged children. Participants will work with the presenter and with each other to learn key DBT skills in breakout rooms. In-vivo Mindfulness exercises will be practiced as a group. Essentially this presentation is to help professionals master the art of working with and connecting to a child in overtly significant emotional pain and those who are quietly struggling with their feelings and social skills. Emerging research also shows the versatility of DBT with Neurodivergent children especially those on the Autism Spectrum who are in need of skills building in their emotional needs.