May is Mental Health Awareness Month and we are continuing our theme of providing education and resources for anyone who is impacted. Which is a lot of us considering recent data suggests that over 50% of Americans will experience mental health problems at some point in their lifetime. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Youth depression rates have doubled since 2012. And mental illness affects people of any age, race, sex, religion, or income.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that was developed in the late 1990s by Dr. Marsha Linehan with the goal of treating Borderline Personality Disorder (BDP). Since that time, DBT has been found to successfully treat many different mental health problems, especially those that involve a difficulty regulating emotions such as ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Eating Disorders, Major Depression, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
The main goals of DBT are to teach people how to live in the moment, regulate their emotions, develop and maintain healthy relationships, and cope with distress. Because the goals are universally valuable, DBT skills have been well-established in the therapy community as a set of useful tools to develop no matter what brings a patient into treatment.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. All month, mental health advocates, prevention organizations, survivors, allies, and community members promote suicide prevention awareness. In the CoVid-19 environment, social isolation, anxiety, fear of illness, uncertainty, chronic stress, and economic problems may lead to an increase in suicidality in certain populations. Public health experts agree that adolescents are one such vulnerable population.
Suicide rates among teens have been steadily increasing in recent years, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2019). Every day, approximately 12 teens die by suicide. For every one death that occurs, 25 more suicide attempts are made.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The main goals of DBT are to teach people how to live in the moment, regulate their emotions, develop and maintain healthy relationships, and cope with distress. You might remember back in June when we wrote about a communication strategy called DEAR MAN. This is a DBT strategy aimed at helping people set boundaries and ask for what they need in a healthy and balanced way.