DBT Consultation for Line Staff Working with Residential Youth

Residential youth often present with complex mental health problems and safety-interfering behaviors. Direct care staff are largely responsible for the everyday care and treatment of these youth. However, while line staff have the most hours of direct contact with residential clients, they often receive the least training and supervision. Not surprisingly, burnout, treatment apathy, and turnover are especially high for line staff. Given the serious challenges posed by residential youth and faced by line staff, we need to know of ways to better prepare line staff for their role. DBT is one treatment model that effectively deals with high levels of emotional/behavioral dysregulation and chronic, unsafe behavior often displayed by residential youth. Consequently, this training and consultation manual utilized the DBT model and aims to improve staffs ability in implementing an effective DBT-informed treatment, while increasing staff support and decreasing staff burnout and treatment apathy.