Final answer:
DBT treatment prioritizes life-threatening behaviors, therapy-interfering behaviors, quality of life behaviors, and finally, developing self-respect and achieving individual goals. It combines cognitive-behavioral techniques with mindfulness practices to regulate emotions, increase distress tolerance, and improve interpersonal effectiveness.
Step-by-step explanation:
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a type of psychotherapy that combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and reality-testing with concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance, and mindful awareness largely derived from Buddhist meditative practice. DBT especially focuses on providing therapeutic skills in four key areas. First, it focuses on emotion regulation, which teaches clients how to manage and change intense emotions that are causing problems in their life. Second, DBT emphasizes distress tolerance, which is geared towards increasing a person’s tolerance of negative emotion, rather than trying to escape from it. Third, it covers interpersonal effectiveness, which involves techniques that enable a person to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships. Lastly, DBT addresses mindfulness skills, which are centered on improving an individual’s ability to accept and be present in the current moment.
These core skills are built through both individual therapy and group skills training. The hierarchy of treatment targets in DBT often follows a specific order: first, life-threatening behaviors; second, therapy-interfering behaviors; third, quality of life behaviors; and fourth, developing self-respect and achieving individual goals. This targeted approach helps to ensure that the most pressing issues are addressed as a priority in therapy.