Adolescent is such a stage wherein you as a parent need to take the utmost care of your teens. They have very strange and typical behavior. Neither you can reprimand nor give complete liberty to do things. They have varied negative emotions stored in them which creates hurdles in their life.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Younger Teens is a specialized treatment that makes their life worth living, keeping them in a positive state of mind. When you are at MHS DBT & Mental Health Services, your teen gets comprehensive therapy and helps them to combat negativity thoughts such as sadness, suicidal feelings, emotional dysregulation, and self-harming behavior.

Dr. Marsha Linehan is considered the developer of the DBT often used in connection with CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to treat patients with borderline having very limited self-control.

The therapy covers four strategies as follows.

  • Mindfulness – This strategy explains and trains to live life in the present moment, maintaining balance in adverse situations and avoid being judgemental very often.
  • Interpersonal effectiveness – This skill helps to maintain the relationship, deny the request of any activity that you don’t want to do soberly without hurting the opposite person’s feelings.
  • Distress tolerance – Understanding the situations and making adjustments such that your teens are not habitual to any pain.
  • Emotional regulation – You gain the power to fully control your emotions.

DBT’s Perspective and Approach

DBT finds a middle way to control and stabilize the emotions, thinking patterns of the teen. By applying the DBT session, the entire perspective is changed and you approach every situation maturely.

Benefits of having DBT

DBT has various short-term and long-term benefits. The benefits do not reach adolescent, but to the adult as well. A few of the benefits are listed below over and above the four strategies.

Puberty related – The puberty changes the mind-set of every child. Since the brain’s prefrontal cortex is the in developing stage, the internal functioning lacks calmness, acceptance and hence the teens become impulsive, aggressive.

Discovering the inner strengths – You know yourself better and are in better control of yourself. You can recover from major depression, personality disorder, bipolar disorder.

Social responsibility – You develop social responsibility sense by avoiding harmful situations such as engaging yourself in drugs and alcohol, antisocial and narcissistic activities.

DBT can be implemented in four ways. 

Outpatient DBT – With this option, your teen can attend school and live at home. The therapy lengths to over a year with each session conducted every week for six months. The same modules are repeated for another six months.

Intensive DBT – This is a sort of fast-track course similar to outpatient DBT. In this option, the session is conducted every day Instead of every week.

Partial Hospitalization – This option enables your teen at home but cannot go to school considering your teen does not require regular supervision. A partial hospitalization enables one to accomplish the therapy within a very limited period.

Residential Treatment – This is for teens who cannot be left unsupervised. The teen is under 24×7 supervision for treatment.

To sum up, the DBT is very essential, if you find any symptoms of aggression, unresponsive behavior in your teen. This will enable early treatment and make your teen’s life struggle-free.