DBT Skills for Adolescents and Families

Adolescents face unique emotional and relational challenges - and so do the therapists and families supporting them. In this course, you’ll learn how to effectively teach Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills to adolescents and their families - directly from the developers who adapted DBT skills training for this population.

Drs Marsha Linehan, Alec Miller, and Jill Rathus offer an engaging, hands-on approach to using DBT skills with teens and their families in real-world settings. You’ll learn how to orient teens and parents to skills training, build buy-in, and teach the five DBT skills modules adapted for adolescents—Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, Distress Tolerance, Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Walking the Middle Path, a module developed specifically to address parent-teen conflict and family dynamics.

This training gives you clear strategies for working across multiple formats, including multi-family groups, individual sessions, parent-focused work, and family skills sessions. Through clinical demonstrations and practical guidance, you’ll see how to teach DBT skills in ways that resonate with teens and support lasting change in family relationships.

A Course Designed for Everyday Clinical Use

This course gives you a clear framework for applying DBT skills with teens and families. You’ll learn how to:

• Introduce skills in ways that are relatable, engaging, and developmentally appropriate

• Work effectively with parent-teen emotional dynamics and communication

• Manage group behavior—including therapy-interfering behaviors—and keep sessions emotionally safe and focused

• Use DBT skills with teens experiencing anxiety, mood issues, behavioral challenges, and suicidal thoughts

• Adapt your teaching approach for different levels of need, readiness, and family structure

• Conduct a graduation ceremony to mark the completion of skills training

This course is approved for 12 CE hours (see Learner Notification). Prior to registering please visit the FAQ to review CE/CME details, course objectives, speaker/planner conflict of interest disclosures and more.