The Emotion Regulation Skills System for Clients with Cognitive Challenges: A Dbt-Informed Approach

Now in a fully revised second edition, this authoritative manual presents the only dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)-informed approach designed specifically for people of all ages with learning and mental health challenges. Used in a wide range of clinical and community settings, the Skills System teaches essential emotion regulation and adaptive coping skills in a motivating, structured framework. It allows clinicians to provide comprehensive treatment for individuals who have had difficulty engaging in traditional therapeutic services. In a convenient large-size format, the manual features ideas for scaffolding learning, a sample 12-week group curriculum, and practical tools, including a reproducible/downloadable lesson planning worksheet. Client handouts and worksheets are not included in the second edition, but are provided in the companion workbook designed to optimize client learning, available separately in print or fillable e-book formats: The Emotion Regulation Skills System Workbook, Second Edition.

New to This Edition

• Reflects the use of the Skills System in a growing range of settings; includes pre-instruction strategies, targeting strategies, and more ways to tailor instruction to clients’ needs, abilities, context, and learning preferences.
• Chapter on integrating the Skills System into individual therapy sessions.
• Updated emotion regulation theory and research.
• Companion workbook written expressly for clients, with numerous new reproducible tools.

Julie F. Brown, MSW, PhD, is the president of Skills System, LLC. She is an independent social worker who has practiced in the intellectual disabilities field since the 1990s. Dr. Brown has been a dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) trainer with Behavioral Tech Institute since 2005.