For Referring Therapists

Our DBT Skills Group can be a wonderful addition to your patient’s individual psychotherapy sessions.

DBT Skills Groups are meant to enhance the work you are already doing with your clients, not replace it.  Dialectical Behavior Therapy was designed as a multi-disciplinary treatment model including both individual and group skills training.  With this adjunctive support, focusing on development of skills in coping and interpersonal effectiveness, members practice tolerating their most difficult feelings – the ones that have previously both interfered with treatment and triggered them into self-destructive behavior.

Communication and collaboration is my goal. If you are considering referring a patient to my DBT Skills Group I encourage you to call me so that we can discuss if the DBT Skills group would be appropriate for that individual.

Once you refer a patient to my DBT Skills Group I will communicate with you weekly. Every week after the group meets I email a DBT Weekly Update to participating psychotherapists. This update consists of what we covered in the class, what mindfulness activity we practiced in class, what skills were taught and what homework was assigned. There is no personal information conveyed in this email. (For example, we do not send out an attendance list or indicate who was absent.)

Referring psychotherapists and their respective patients say that this weekly update has been an extremely effective way to communicate what skills were taught and has given each psychotherapist enough information so they can then incorporate the skills in the individual’s psychotherapy sessions. Both psychotherapists and Skills Group participants have reported that the skills taught have been extremely useful and life changing.

I am very accessible and want to collaborate with you. Depending on the referral we can decide together how often to talk and the best mode of communication.