About this course
Adolescents today are struggling with self-injury (Cipriano et al., 2017) and suicidality (Verlenden et al., 2024) which, without surprise, is typically distressing to the teen and their caregivers. In connection with this, caregivers often experience their own symptoms of depression and anxiety, grief, and impaired empowerment (Bailey & Grenyer, 2013). The CDC’s Surgeon General issued an advisory in 2024 labeling parenting as a health risk (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024). Specifically, 40% of parents reported that most days they are “so stressed they cannot function,” and 33% of parents with children under 18 reported their stress levels as an 8 or higher on a 10 point scale; these stressors are further exacerbated when their teens are struggling with mental health challenges (Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 2016–2017).
Although there is not yet a gold standard for incorporating caregivers into DBT, their involvement is strongly supported. For adolescents, including caregivers in treatment is associated with fewer self-harm events (Berk et al., 2022) and suicide attempts (McCauley et al., 2018). For caregivers, participation can result in their own decreased psychological distress (Berk et al., 2022; Flynn et al., 2023) and improved family functioning (Bosworth et al., 2022). These outcomes highlight the need to explore how caregivers can be engaged in their adolescent’s treatment.
This workshop will offer an understanding of the benefits of including parents and guardians in their adolescent’s DBT-A care and strategies for implementation. Toward this objective, we will present options for including caregivers in standard DBT-A treatment. These interventions are designed to increase caregiver skill acquisition and generalization. We will describe a six-week parent “DBT Caregiver Bootcamp,” varying frequencies of family therapy, the inclusion of parents in Multifamily Group (MFG), and caregiver skills phone coaching. We will also describe the rationale behind this service combination and share support for its effectiveness. Moreover, we will provide additional ideas for supporting caregivers so that participants can consider a range of ways to flexibly include parents and guardians in different types of clinic settings.
By the end of this workshop, participants will understand the benefits of including caregivers in treatment and have ideas for parent services that they can offer in their own clinics. There will be time for questions and discussion.
