Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based therapy with both established efficacy for treatment of several difficult-to-treat and vulnerable populations and promising applications in other clinical populations. Treatments for populations targeted by DBT, however, are under-represented in existing clinical training programs. The proposed training program will develop, evaluate, and disseminate a clinical research training curriculum to produce clinician-scientists competent in disseminating evidence based clinical practices and conducting science-informed treatment development and clinical research for these vulnerable populations. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an empirically supported and integrative therapy, with established efficacy for treatment of borderline personality disorder, chronic and acute suicidality, and co-morbid substance use. DBT also has promising clinical applications in a range of other populations (e.g., adolescent and forensic populations) for which clinical trials must be conducted in the future. Due to its evidence-based structure, ongoing research programs, and wide range of clinical applications, DBT is an ideal vehicle for a focused clinician-scientist training program. In particular, clinical training in treating populations for which DBT has been demonstrated effective is not adequately provided by existing clinical training programs. The purpose of the proposed training activity is to develop, evaluate, and disseminate a clinician-scientist training curriculum to develop clinical, research, and training competence in DBT. The novel curriculum will involve an enhancement of existing DBT graduate and professional curriculum, with a focus on training clinician-scientists to (1) develop clinical research programs for untested applications of DBT;and (2) translate empirical clinical findings to clinical practice and (3) disseminate DBT to community treatment centers. The curriculum will involve the following domains: (1) didactic instruction in research and theory related to treatment and target populations;(2) focused instruction by recognized experts in topic areas of particular relevance to the target populations (e.g., suicide assessment;research ethics);and (3) supervised clinical practice in each modality of DBT. In summary, the proposed curriculum aims to promote dissemination of evidence based treatment (DBT) and conduct science-informed treatment development (based on DBT) and evaluation, with particular focus on populations that are difficult to treat and whose treatment is underrepresented in existing clinical training and research.
