Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder,   ISBN:9780898620344

Customer Rating: 

I really like the introduction part which talks about borderline and covers specifics/challenges in working with such population. A must-have book for a clinical SW, excellent exercises to work with.

Customer Rating: 

unless you are taking a class this is very very hard to understand. It is far to advanced for the average person.

Customer Rating: 

"The Role of the Invalidating Environment in Emotion Dysregulation" (p.3) is the turnkey to this therapy. The CBT exercises about emotion regulation and stress tolerance are very good, but radical acceptance and mindfulness are what makes DBT therapy effective and revolutionary. Twelve step adherants will be familiar with these ideas too but the combination of modalities can provide something helpful for everyone. While initially written based on her work with women with suicidal behavior, like many new discoveries, DBT has proven to be effective for many different disorders.

A recent article in The Atlantic by D. Dobbs describes the "genetic vulnerability" model for those at risk for "depression, anxiety, ADHD, ... anti-social sociopathic or violent behaviors." The invalidating environment that Linehan stresses may be the deciding factor in what happens to these high-risk people, whether they become sociopaths, addicts, or "creative, successful, and happy people."

Customer Rating: 

I am a man who has been treated for depression at several locations, and it seems that therapists are trying to use Linehan to treat anything and everything. Some of the methods can obviously be helpful to some people, but there is never full disclosure about Linehan's methods. The treatment in this book was created treating only women who have tried to commit suicide. It is stated that this means the methods are to treat those most in pain and at risk for suicide, even though four to five times as many men commit suicide as women. This fact will never be told to the many men who will be charged thousands of dollars for this treatment, full of superficial pscho-babble catered to female patients. Linehan draws much from mysticism, radical feminism, and postmodernism, but this won't ever be told to a prospective patient. Every time I entered into DBT treatment I was told it was the most empirically grounded scientifically proven treatment there is, charged tens of thousands of dollars, and only later learned (after unsuccessful therapies) that these claims (which the therapists do believe) couldn't be further from the truth. DBT is a fad therapy that is seen as a cure-all, but does not provide much real substance, especially for men.

Customer Rating: 

Whether you're a counselor teaching DBT or a an individual in need of one, this book is good. It doesn't go into the reasons of the disorder, just the basics on what skills to practice to help regulate emotions. Great in conjunction with DBT therapy but not a substitute to therapy, for those who need this DBT.