Establishing a Therapist Certification Process in National DBT Society.
The following recommendations represent the commonalities of the existing independent DBT certification/accreditation processes (eg. German Dachverband, SfDBT UK and Ireland and LBC)
- Therapist certification (note: called “therapist accreditation” in the SfDBT UK and Ireland) processes must be independent from training companies. It is recommended that national societies create a board of certification to oversee these processes and to review applications for certification. All requirements for therapist certification should be publicly available on the website of the national society;
- DBT therapists must have a core profession that is recognised in their country as a qualification that permits someone to offer psychotherapy or work one-on-one in delivering mental health interventions (most often, clinical, health, or forensic psychologist, psychiatrist, mental health nurse, social worker, occupational therapist, or psychotherapist). Candidates must be fully qualified/licensed in their profession prior to applying for certification/accreditation as a DBT therapist;
- DBT therapists must have training in DBT in addition to practice experience. Requirements for didactic training in DBT range from 40 hours-100 hours. The curriculum for didactic training in DBT should the core competencies for DBT training outlined in the WDBTA guidance;
- DBT therapists must have been practicing for a certain amount of time post DBT training and have treated a specified number of clients with DBT prior to applying for certification/accreditation.
- Supervision of individual cases, including review of recordings, is either highly recommended or required;
- DBT therapists applying for therapist certification must demonstrate their command of the treatment through an exam or the submission of clinical material such as case conceptualisations and behavioural chain and solution analyses, often including therapist therapy interfering behaviour;
- Once the therapist material submitted for number six is reviewed according to transparent criteria and “passed” (deemed an effective/”good enough” demonstration of command of the therapy), therapists submit recordings of their work. To complete the therapist certification process, at least one (more in the German Dachverband) recording must be rated as adherent to model;
- Once all of these steps have been completed, a therapist would then be certified for a certain period of time (maximum 10 years);
- A publicly accessible record of certified therapists should be available on the national society’s website; and
- Certified therapists are expected to “Maintain” their certification by participating in a minimum specified number of continuing DBT education and practice training hours per year. This should be monitored each year.