It is with deep sadness, and with profound gratitude, that the European DBT community mourns the death of Marsha Linehan. Marsha died peacefully in Seattle on 10 November 2026. With her we have lost the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, one of the most influential psychotherapists of our time – and many of us have lost a teacher, a companion and a friend.

Marsha dared to do what had long been considered hopeless: she turned towards the people so many others had given up on – people struggling with severe emotional instability, with suicidality and self-harm, people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She took their suffering seriously without looking away, and she believed unwaveringly in their capacity to change. Out of this stance, DBT was born at the University of Washington in Seattle: a therapy that does not play acceptance and change off against each other, but holds them together. Behavioral precision and the practice of mindfulness rooted in the Zen tradition – for Marsha, these were never a contradiction, but a whole.

Today DBT is the most thoroughly researched treatment for borderline personality disorder. Around the world it has helped countless patients build a life worth living, as Marsha liked to put it. She knew from her own experience what she was talking about. When she later spoke publicly about her own history of suffering, she gave courage to many who struggle, and made many of us who treat them more humble.

Europe owes Marsha a great deal. She came here often and gladly – as a teacher at workshops and conferences, and as a Zen practitioner. Her generosity, her curiosity and her willingness to share what she knew helped DBT take root across the continent: in clinical services, in training programmes and in research, adapted to many languages, health-care systems and cultures. Programmes for adolescents, for residential and forensic settings, and further developments grew from her work. The EDBTA and its national member associations are, in essence, among her many fruits – a community that she inspired and that will carry her legacy forward.

Marsha led a truly remarkable life: intense, raw, painful and warm-hearted, brilliant and deeply focused, and then again exuberant. No one who met her ever forgot her – her wit, her directness, her warmth and her tenacity. She could demand and challenge, she could laugh out loud, and she never stopped believing that we could do better.
A few years ago I asked her what she would like to have written on her tombstone. “I have to think about that,” she said. The next time we met: “I’m still thinking. This is important.” The third time, she had her answer: “Write on my tombstone:

“And I said yes.”

– “Oh Marsha,” I said, “you don’t settle for anything less, do you?” And we both laughed.

She was thinking of St. Mary at the Annunciation: a yes that holds the greatest joy and the deepest sorrow at the same time. That is what Marsha was about – in her life as in her therapy: saying yes to reality as it is, and saying yes to the possibility of change. Yes to deep joy and to deep pain.

In her final years, Marsha left us step by step. She lived well cared for and safe in Seattle, accompanied by her daughter Gerry. She died peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones, to the sound of the Gregorian chant she loved so much.

We are sad. And we are deeply grateful – for her work, for her courage and for her yes. It is now up to us, the DBT community in Europe, to carry this yes forward: to the people she taught us never to give up on.