What are the top targets and goals of treatment in DBT?
The most important of the overall goals in DBT is helping clients create “lives worth living.” What makes a life worth living varies from client to client. For some clients, a life worth living is getting married and having kids. For others, it’s finishing school and finding a life partner. Others might find it’s joining a religious or spiritual group and buying a house near a place of worship. While all these goals will differ, all clients have in common the task of bringing problem behaviors, especially behaviors that could result in death, under control. For this reason, DBT organizes treatment into four stages with targets. Targets refer to the problems being addressed at any given time in therapy. Here are the four stages with targeted behaviors in DBT: Stage I: Moving from Being Out of Control of One’s Behavior to Being in Control Target 1: Reduce and then eliminate life-threatening behaviors (e.g., suicide attempts, suicidal thinking, intentional self-harm). Target 2: Reduce and
