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Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (DBT-PTSD)

From April 17, 2023 to May 09, 2023


This 4-week (32 hours) course provides a comprehensive examination of DBT-PTSD based on a psycho-social model. Within this model, dysfunctional behaviors are understood as strategies to avoid or escape from trauma-associated primary emotions like powerlessness, threat, anxiety, disgust, humiliation, or sexual arousal. The model posits that these emotions are corroborated by dysfunctional cognitive assumptions and dysfunctional behaviors such as self-injury, suicidal ideation, dissociation or intoxication and that problematic secondary emotions such as shame, guilt, self-hatred, or chronic anger develop over time into problematic self-concepts which impair quality of life.


DBT-PTSD primarily aims to help patients: a) Revise their fear of trauma-associated primary emotions, b) Question whether secondary emotions like guilt and shame fit the facts, and c) Radically accept the fact of trauma in their lives in order to establish a life worth living. The treatment program is designed to be delivered in a residential program (three-months) or in an outpatient setting (45 weeks).


This 4-week (32 hours) course provides comprehensive training in DBT-PTSD and a manual.


This program has been accredited by the Ontario Psychological Association for 28 CE credits


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