Orienting Adolescents and Families to DBT Telephone Consultation: Principles, Procedures, and Pitfalls

Preliminary studies evaluating dialectical behavior therapy with adolescents have obtained promising outcomes. This multimodal therapy includes telephone consultation for adolescents and for their family members to help ensure generalization of skills from the therapy office to their natural environments. Telephone contact with the DBT therapist is also encouraged for teens to share good news as well as to repair the therapeutic relationship when needed. This article provides guidelines for therapists to orient adolescents and their family members to telephone consultation. The authors provide transcripts of different types of telephone calls to illustrate the application of these procedures to specific problems presented by adolescents and family members.