Dialectical behavioral therapy skills training as a social-emotional development program for teachers.


The present study proposes the use of dialectical behavioral therapy skills training (DBT-ST) as an enhancement intervention to develop social-emotional competencies that is, as a program for promotion of teacher mental health and classroom skills in the school environment. In this study, DBT-ST was used as a form of continuing teacher education as opposed to a treatment of pathology. An evaluation was made of the effects of a brief DBT-ST intervention on the development of specific social-emotional competencies. The participants were 27 elementary schoolteachers who work in public schools located in a city in southern Brazil. Based on a mixed-methods approach, data on measures of emotion regulation difficulties, educational social skills, and intervention feasibility were collected at 3 different times: pretest, posttest, and a follow-up 2 months after the end of the intervention. The analysis of repeated measures showed improvement in the educational social ability to present, explain, and evaluate interactively. The intervention was well accepted by the teachers, and a qualitative analysis has shown positive effects. The results point to a possible contribution of dialectical behavioral therapy to school settings. However, the format of the intervention needs further adaptation and improvement for use in this context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)