Learn and Earn Over Lunch Series

Thanks for being part of our community!

The Learn and Earn over Lunch series is an opportunity to earn free NBCC approved continuing education credits from outstanding trainers, while you eat lunch! Join us online (via Zoom) from noon to 1:00pm Pacific Time every month on the second Wednesday.

In addition, feel free to take a look at our other training offerings as well as employment opportunities at PDBTI!

 

Treating Couples with Borderline Personality Disorder: Lessons Learned from the Sage Studies

Dr. Fitzpatrick and her colleagues have spent the past five years developing and testing Sage; a Dialectical Behavior Therapy-informed couple intervention for borderline personality disorder (BPD) and emotion dysregulation. This webinar will provide an overview of Sage and the research supporting its efficacy to date. It will also draw on lessons learned from the development, testing, and implementation of Sage to provide clinicians with concrete skills for treating BPD within a dyadic framework and/or incorporating partners into BPD treatment. Targeted skills designed to facilitate interpersonal emotion regulation, including ways to encourage effective emotional expression, communication, and validation, and reduce invalidation in both members of the couple will be described.

Learning Objectives  
By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the three phases of Sage and guidelines for progressing from one phase to the next.
2. Describe the current evidence base for Sage in treating couples wherein one member has BPD.
3. Identify core strategies for promoting interpersonal emotion regulation in couples wherein one member has BPD.

Instructor |Dr. Skye Fitzpatrick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at York University and the director of the Treating and Understanding Life-threatening behaviour and Posttraumatic stress (TULiP lab). Dr. Fitzpatrick is focused on demystifying, destigmatizing, and broadening access to treatments for borderline personality disorder (BPD), emotion dysregulation, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She specifically aims to optimize, expedite, and expand access to interventions for these disorders by targeting them alongside the social contexts that they are nested within. Her research can be organized into four interrelated streams. The first involves advancing understanding of the nature of BPD and its social context through experimental, ecological momentary assessment, and observational studies. The remaining three involve using clinical trial methodologies to develop and test Sage– a brief, conjoint intervention for people with BPD and their significant others; scalable interventions for PTSD; and interventions for comorbid BPD and PTSD. Dr. Fitzpatrick has published ~100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters to these ends. She has also been awarded over $9.5 million CAD in grant and scholarship funding for work in these and related areas.

November: Join us virtually or in Baltimore, MD at ISITDBT Conference on Thursday November 12, 2026! Registration opening soon!

Teaching Tightrope: Training and Supervision in DBT

There are now more ways than ever to access training in DBT. One important pathway to developing competence and expertise in the treatment is supervised practice. Because DBT is a principle-based treatment and the clients who seek DBT can look so different from one another, there are many factors to be considered in training and supervision. Aside from helping trainees understand the theory and structure of the treatment, supervision must help trainees learn to effectively evaluate quickly shifting client needs and apply the principles and strategies they have learned to a variety of novel situations. This Learn and Earn aims to support individuals who are providing training and supervision in DBT by identifying important features, strategies, and considerations in DBT training and supervision as well as practical tools for enhancing DBT supervision.

Learning Objectives  
By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:

1. List 3 core features of DBT Training
2. List 3 strategies of the treatment recommended for use in supervision
3. Identify 2 ways to help trainees generalize approaches learned in supervision to novel client situations

Instructor | Dr. Forsythe Cox is a Clinical Associate professor and the director of the Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Clinic at the University of Washington. She teaches courses and provides supervision to advanced graduate students learning to deliver DBT. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification certified clinician. She has provided clinical services in a variety of settings, including Veteran Affairs medical centers, university psychological services centers, private outpatient clinics, and maximum-security forensic inpatient settings. Dr. Forsythe Cox has been a Training development Specialist and is also a trainer and consultant for The Behavioral Tech institute, a non-profit training company founded by Dr. Linehan which provides training and consultation for DBT clinicians nationally and internationally. Dr. Forsythe Cox has worked to increase collaborative efforts in the DBT community to help providers better serve clients with diverse identities.

Are you interested in more training on this topic? Join us on April 16, 2027 for a 3hr training on this topic!

FREE CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDIT

Participants who attend an event in this series will earn one free continuing education credit, NBCC approved.

Portland DBT Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6326. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Portland DBT Institute is solely is responsible for all aspects of the programs.