Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents at Rutgers University

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey

Status: Completed

Conditions: Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescence

Treatments: Behavioral: DBT-A

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03861858

2018001563

Details and patient eligibility

About

This project expands our existing psychological services clinic (the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Clinic at Rutgers University; DBT-RU) to include an adolescent treatment arm. Adolescents aged 13-20 and at least one caregiver will be recruited to participate in a six-month treatment study. Adolescents will be eligible to participate if they meet at least 3 criteria for borderline personality disorder, with one of those criteria being either impulsive behavior or recurrent self-harm behavior. Participants will be assessed at baseline, three-months (mid-treatment), six-months (post-treatment, and three-month follow-up.

Enrollment: 56 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 13 to 20 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age 13-17 years or 18-20 if still living at home with parent.
• Agreement of at least one responsible adult parent/caregiver to participate in treatment.
• Agreement to take part in assessments, videotaping/audiotaping and coding of their sessions by research personnel.
• Agreement to pay for mental health services at the DBT- RU on a sliding scale, and to participate in research assessments as volunteers.
• Residence within commuting distance of clinic (< 45 minutes).
• Agreement to discontinue other forms of talk therapy for duration of DBT program (does not refer to AA/NA programs or psychotropic medication management).
• Exhibits dysregulation within the past six months as evidenced by 1) intentional self-injury and/or suicide attempt and/or 2) substance use disorder.
• Meets two additional criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Exclusion criteria

• Clients who need mental health services not available at the DBT- RU, such as treatment for schizophrenia or life-threatening anorexia, or who are currently obtaining optimum professional treatment that should not be ended.
• Non-English speaking.
• IQ < 70.
• Unable to understand research consent forms.
• Court-ordered to participate in treatment.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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56 participants in 1 patient group

DBT-A

Experimental group

Description:

The standard treatment to be delivered to all participants is DBT-A, which is a treatment model adapted from DBT. DBT-A is an adaptation for adolescents with emotion dysregulation and BPD features (Miller, Rathus, \& Linehan, 2007; Rathus \& Miller, 2015). DBT-A involves weekly individual therapy with the adolescent, weekly multifamily skills group in which adolescents and family members participate, as needed phone coaching, and weekly consultation team for the therapists.

Treatment:

Behavioral: DBT-A