DBT treatment for Teens and Preteens at The Koch Center is customized according to the individual’s clinical presentation to meet the needs of the child and family. There are three components in DBT treatment: a weekly individual DBT session for the child, a parent DBT session for the parents – either weekly or every other week, and a weekly skills family training session.
In the weekly skills training session, the five modules of the DBT skills are taught to parents and child together. It is important for the parents to learn the skills, as well as the child, so that parents can coach their child on skills use at home. The individual DBT session focuses on helping the child incorporate skill use to decrease maladaptive coping and behavior and increase effective coping and emotion regulation. The parent DBT session helps parents to implement and troubleshoot DBT strategies and generalize them to the home.
Individuals may continue with an existing outside therapist in addition to the individual DBT sessions. If a child is working with an outside therapist, our team will ask for to consent to speak with him/her. By coordinating with an outside therapist, we are better able to provide maximum cohesion and continuity in treatment.
Although we have a DBT team that has been ‘intensively trained’ by Behavioral Tech (visit www.behavioraltech.org for more information), the organization directed by the founder of DBT, Dr. Marsha Linehan, we are no longer running a traditionally adherent DBT program, but instead have chosen to customize treatment to each family’s specific circumstances and clinical presentation. It is for that reason that we may end up determining that your child needs a more adherent DBT program versus our customized treatment. In that case, we will provide you with suggested referrals.
Our customized DBT program takes approximately 6 months to complete. Once completed, the child/parents may choose to continue in individual and parent therapy with us, if appropriate.
Please contact Dr. Cyndi Koch at 201-670-6450 x1 with any questions.