Stalking, or repetitive harassment, has been increasingly recognized as a significant public health problem because of both the high frequency with which it occurs as well as the detrimental impact on victims. Research has identified stalking offenders that target former intimates and those with a personality disorder as representing a particularly high risk for both violent behavior and continued stalking (recidivism). Former intimates also comprise the largest proportion of stalking offenders, accounting for 60% or more of this population, or hundreds of thousands of stalking cases each year nationwide. As the psychological factors that lead to stalking and harassment are increasingly recognized, the need for clinical interventions designed to target these issues has emerged. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) represents a particularly desirable approach for treating stalking offenders given the high rates of borderline, antisocial, and narcissistic personality disorder diagnoses among this population. DBT also has both empirical and broad clinical support as the preferred treatment modality for borderline personality disorder and is increasingly used with multi-diagnostic difficult-to-manage patients, criminal offenders, and individuals with antisocial personality characteristics. Further, DBT emphasizes behavior change and improving interpersonal effectiveness, two important needs in this population, as well as helping identify precipitants to stalking behaviors and developing/reinforcing an alternative behavioral repertoire. The present study proposes to assess the feasibility and efficacy of DBT in reducing recidivism and decreasing violence. We intend to compare our modified DBT program (""""""""Project SHARP"""""""") which has been in development and pilot testing for the past 18 months to a """"""""treatment as usual"""""""" intervention (an anger management/accountability group intervention) in a sample of stalking offenders. We intend to compare outcome for offenders who complete DBT to those who complete this alternative treatment and with treatment drop-outs in order to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of this intervention. All participants will be assessed using a battery of clinician-rated, self report and behavioral measures before and after the 6-month intervention and again 6 months after completing treatment. In addition, recidivism will be assessed through periodic review of criminal justice records in order to identify participants who have re-offended with either continued stalking behavior or other criminal behavior. ? ? ?
