Brief Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT-B) for Suicidal Behavior and Non-Suicidal Self Injury

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a shorter course of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in enhancing treatment retention and reducing: urges to engage in non-suicidal self injury (NSSI), NSSI, suicide ideation, and subjective distress in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Twenty patients with BPD received a six-month course of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT-B). DBT-B was delivered in the standard manner except for the shortened duration from one-year minimum to six months. All variables were measured at baseline, and at six months. Data were analyzed using paired t-tests. Treatment retention rate was 95%. Significant reductions were found in NSSI urges, NSSI, suicide ideation, subjective distress, depression, and hopelessness between baseline and six months. These results support the use of DBT-B in a six-month format when NSSI and suicidal behavior and ideation are the targeted behaviors. Target behaviors were reduced significantly and retention was extremely high in comparison to other interventions for this population. A large scale randomized controlled trial investigating its efficacy is warranted to determine if the results can be replicated and if improvement can be sustained.

Keywords:

• borderline personality disorder
• dialectical behavior therapy
• non-suicidal self injury
• suicide

This work was funded in part by grants MH061017 and MH062665 from the National Institute of Mental Health and P20 AA015630 from NIAAA.

Notes

+ 3 month comparison because 6 mos. was not available.

∗p < .05.

∗∗p < .01.