This DBT program presentation document provides guidelines for teams to describe their DBT program, including: naming team members and their professions; the population served; inclusion and exclusion criteria that must be behaviorally specific and avoid vague terms; the functions and modalities provided, such as skills training groups; telephone support and crisis coverage details; current patients in the program; any available outcome data; and three questions for feedback to improve the program.

1. G I V E U S Y O U R T E A M N A M E
DBT Program Presentation

2. Who is in your team
 Give us names and professions

3. What population do you serve?
 E.g. we cover the whole of West Dorset
 There are three community teams
 Add an extra slide with an organisation diagram if
that helps us understand who you serve

4. Inclusion criteria
 Show items in bullet points
 You get marked down if they are vague – like ‘must be
motivated’ How will you quantify that?
 The inclusion criteria is the info you send to non-DBT
therapists so they send you the right people.
 Think of it this way: A patient who gets all the way to first
assessment and then gets turned away is a FAILURE of
your inclusion/exclusion criteria
 We’re also looking to see that the items are not open to
interpretation, 2 people must be able apply them the
same way
 If you have an item you can’t quantify, leave it out

5. Exclusion Criteria
 Same applies as for the inclusion criteria
 The idea of inclusion/exclusion is that your referrers
are very clear who to send you, and that the people
who come as a result of your criteria are highly
appropriate
 The inclusion/exclusion criteria should get you the
right amount of people
 They must be behaviourally specific.
 A low-populated area would usually have more broad
criteria than a dense population

6. Tell us what functions and modes you have in
this program
A common error is that teams just describe the
functions and modes that are in a DBT service (we
know that!) nad don’t tell us which ones they do
You can do one slide per modality if you want to

7. e.g. Function: Enhance capabilities
 We have a skills training group that meets every
Thursday from ten till twelve-thirty in Newtown

8. You can do more slides to show other functions
and modalities
 E.g telephone contact – Joe and Ellie both do 24 hour contact
and all therapists do calls till 8:00pm.
 Weekends we have a rota for checking an answering machine.
 At night clients who don’t have 24 hour cover call the duty
system, we have added extra training for them. We are
working towards getting full cover for the DBT service
 Remember it doesn’t count as part of your service if the people
answering the phone don’t come to consult.

9. People in the program
 E.g. 10 patients started skills training group 2
months ago
 One person has dropped out
 Everyone is seeing an individual therapist

10. Any outcome data
 Some graphs to show ….
 Don’t worry if you don’t have this
 Anything else interesting about your program you
want to tell us

11. The three questions you would like us to help you
with to improve your program or solve a problem
 1
 2
 3