DBT Learning Community

The EBP Learning Community provides a supportive structure to help us openly reflect on and strengthen our practice as therapists who value science and compassion. We are a community whose clients have multiple, complicated, severe problems. Together we learn and use the best of any cognitive behavioral or other evidence-based therapies.

Take a tour (about 7 min.) and read on for more details.

How It Works: Connect, Learn, Contribute

Become a member of the learning community.
View, at your convenience, presentations and podcasts to learn or review key evidence-based practice concepts and strategies.
Practice concepts and strategies with exercises easily integrated into work in your team and with clients.
Share questions, ideas and resources with other members and the community facilitator, Kelly Koerner, Ph.D.
Receive discounts on instructor-led courses offered by the Evidence-Based Practice Institute.

Become a Member

Enrollment for new members is now open to join for the 2010-2011 period. The membership fee is $250 from March '10-February '11. Before you register, please review the consent form to make sure the group will meet your needs. If you'd like more information, please email Kelly, the community facilitator, or if you already know you'd like to join, register here. Please note: Registration is first come, first served and closes March 31, 2011.

2011-2012 EBP Learning Community Themes

1. Fundamentals of Evidence-Based Practice

We study therapy strategies, protocols and other evidence-based practices that are relevant across client problems. We invite great speakers, provide bite-sized mini-lessons with ideas for deliberate practice, and study together in book clubs. Each person decides whether to skim a topic or to instead study and practice it based on their own learning needs. Joining a course or ongoing learning collaborative provides structured support as we implement ideas to improve the quality of therapy we offer. Two focuses this year are: improving treatment of depression including treatments that target shame, self-criticism and self-compassion; and improving use of between session client assignments beginning with Michael Tompkins’ book, Using Homework in Psychotherapy: Strategies, Guidelines, and Forms.

2. Psychotherapy Progress Tracking

Therapists who get feedback on their clients' progress get better outcomes. Many of us want to monitor outcomes at an individual or program level, but barriers and hassles have us blocked. We built the PracticeGround Assessment Wikifor a library of free downloadable measures to start to tackle this.

To help us with progress monitoring, many of our courses explicitly teach how to integrate client measures as we learn a treatment strategy or protocol. We'll continue this year a neat collaborative research project that teaches therapists how to use psychotherapy progress monitoring in routine settings.

3. Consultation, Supervision & Clinical Decision Making

Donna Sudak, Jackie Persons, Rinad Beidas, and Kelly Koerner will coordinatea relaxed-pace group who read the literature on consultation and supervision together and distill key ideas we want to implement in our work, with a special focus on Derek Milne’s evidence-based approach.

What topics are already available in the community?

As part of your membership you have free access to all materials from past years. Here's a partial list of community resources to give you the flavor:

Developing Clinical Expertise thru Deliberate Practice and Feedback by Cannon Thomas
Functional Analytic Psychotherapy and FAP Treatment Planning by Mavis Tsai
An Acceptance-Based Behavior Therapy for Generalized Anxiety Disorder by Liz Roemer
Values Work in ACT: Dignifying Treatment of Disordered Eating by Emily Sandoz & Kelly Wilson
Handling Treatment Failure Successfully by Jackie Persons
Combining Medication & CBT by Donna Sudak
Exposure Procedures by Amy Wagner and Stacy Shaw Welch
Using the Unconscious by Jacqueline A-tjak
Clinical Supervision by Robert Reiser
Resilient Caregiving by Sue McCurry
MetaCognitive Therapy by Dean Watkins
Treatment of Shame Series: by Liz Simpson, Shelly Frank, & Shireen Rizvi
Basic DBT topics by Kelly Koerner and Alan Fruzzetti (e.g., "The First Four Sessions of Individual DBT"; "Case Formulation and Treatment Planning for Stage 1"; "Treating Therapy Interfering Behavior"; "Dialectics"; "Validation"; "The Jazz of Skills Training in Individual DBT"; "Phone Coaching").
Great talks on behavior therapy fundamentals like exposure procedures and clinical behavioral analysis from Michael Dougher, Alan Fruzzetti, Stacy Shaw-Welch, Amy Wagner and Kelly Wilson.

FAQs

"Is any special equipment required?" No. If you have a high-speed internet connection that lets you easily download files and an email account, you're all set.

"How experienced/knowledgeable should I be?" You should be providing individual psychotherapy and interested in evidence-based practice. Beyond that, this format allows folks to pace their own learning: study to fill-in gaps or skim to refresh your memory; share expertise and jump into conversations of interest.

If you have any questions or need further information, don't hesitate to contact Kelly Koerner.