Abstract
Over the past 30 years, dialectical behavior therapy has been shown to be an effective treatment for adult borderline personality disorder. The adaptation of DBT for adolescents (DBT-A) in different patient groups has also led to some promising improvements of the respective psychopathology. During the second German DBT-A network meeting in 2015 in Mainz, Germany, a need for further research and innovative approaches in treatment of adolescents became apparent and resulted in controversial discussions. Main issues were enlarging evidence of effectiveness of DBT-A strategies with regard to family interaction, i.e. involving caregivers in treatment. In general, there seems to be a dire need for disentangling different therapeutic strategies and resulting treatment outcomes, especially concerning the needs of different patient groups. Additionally, the implementation of smartphone-based real life assessment and intervention into DBT-A was discussed extensively. Providing time congruent skills within an application, decreasing aversive tension and reducing dysfunctional behavior could lead to an enhanced therapist-patient interaction. This meeting report presents the core issues raised during the network meeting and discusses their implications for further research.
Highlights
The second German Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A) network meeting was held on 6th and 7th of November 2015, in Mainz, Germany by the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Medicine Mainz, in collaboration with the German head organization for DBT (DDBT)
Using smartphones to enhance DBT-A Standard DBT-A consists of weekly individual therapy sessions accompanied by group skills training, in which participants are taught several skills to manage states of high aversive tension, reduce problem behavior (e.g. non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), substance abuse), build up their interpersonal competence and generally increase their quality of life [12]
More than a decade ago, the concept of DBT-A was established for the first time in Germany
Summary
The second German Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A) network meeting was held on 6th and 7th of November 2015, in Mainz, Germany by the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Medicine Mainz, in collaboration with the German head organization for DBT (DDBT). The DBT-A network meeting hosted 73 mental healthcare professionals from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxemburg. In this meeting report, a short summary of the conference plenaries will be given, further topics of the conference research group will be outlined and the challenges for further research in DBT-A as identified will be described
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