Dialectical behavior therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) combines behavior and cognitive therapies with the goal of providing patients with the healthy and positive mechanism of going through a painful experience or emotions. The therapy was by Marsha Linehan, Ph.D. during the 1970s (Linehan, 1993). DBT was intended to treat patients with borderline personality disorders. The therapy aims to enable patients control their self-defeating thoughts, increase self-awareness, handle conflict and stress and modify thinking through the DBT processes. The main core principles under this therapeutic approach include dialectical thinking, differentiating between ineffective and effective behaviors, none -judgmental approach m and the therapeutic relationship primacy. Additionally, there are four main treatment models for DBT, which are distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. The therapy categories treatment into targets and strategies that with some few exceptions, strictly adhering to them when addressing the problem.

Benefit to society

The DBT is of benefit to the society through a wide range of ways. First the approach is vital in decreasing high-risk self-harming and suicidal behavior among people. The therapy also decreases interfering behaviors and behaviors that interfere with a person’s quality of life such as drug abuse, eating problems and unstable relationships. The approach is also helpful in assisting people master and learns behaviors for mood-independent life choices. The approach further helps to decrease symptoms of depressions, anxiety, stress and trauma. It helps individuals set goals so as to improve their worth of living and to enhance and sustain their self-respect (Linehan, 1993).

Pros and Cons

The advantage of DBT includes its ability to retain clients. Studies on the effectiveness of DBT have demonstrated its ability to retain clients throughout the treatment process. It is despite the therapy being a relatively long form of treatment lasting for 12 months. The therapy also has a high rate of client satisfaction DBT goal is, therefore, effective in meeting its goal of building a life worth living to patients. The therapy does not just aim at relieving symptoms but also decreasing the high cost of psychiatric services. DBT defines a life worth living as that in which a person attains ordinary happiness and happiness. DBT is a principle based and flexible treatment for all forms of multi-diagnostic patients. The treatment is flexible in addressing the specific needs of patients within a structured and standard framework. The DBT structure enables treatment of individuals suffering from substance use disorders and comorbid Axis I disorders. DBT aims to ensure the improvement of life.

The therapy as has clearly defined goals that define behavioral targets. It clearly specifies the functions for every treatment model. The therapy shows other forms of treatment provide no DBT and DBT interact with each other. It specifies the criteria that for determining the start of a formal exposures and guards against iatrogenic effects. DBT is a therapy driven on principle in a flexible manner in which the specific needs of a patient are within a structured and standard framework. DBT promotes the weekly monitoring of outcomes in a diary card. It helps to track the clinical progress by monitoring behavior.

The dialectical behavior therapy has the limitation of the presence of disjunction. It is because of the incompatible conceptual horizons in understanding. The approach also has a major inadequacy when examined from an existential-phenomenological perspective, for it fails to provide on the meaning of suicide to its participants. It also does not offer explanations on how they experience suicide and how to understand the phenomena as part of the treatment process. According to Linehan’s view patients with BPD, who end up committing suicide, are predisposed to do so because of genetic and biological factors in the first place and environmental factors that exacerbate the problem.

The people who can benefit from DBT are those who suffer from behavioral and emotional issues. It is also for people with disorders of eating disorders, depression disorders, chemical addiction/ dependent, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders and post-traumatic disorder. It is because the DBT aims are helping people regulate their emotions and to find a much healthier mechanism for coping (Linehan, 1993). DBT has over the recent years being incorporated for treating people with eating disorders like binge eating, bulimia, compulsive eating, emotional eating, and anorexia. The accompanying of eating disorders is by deep impulsive behavior, negative emotions and patterns of relieving psychological and emotional pain. DBT according to eating disorder specialists is naturally the best approach for treating these kinds of life-threatening problems.

Reference

Linehan, M. (1993) Cognitive-behavioral therapy for borderline personality. New York: The Guilford Press.

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