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S009-1

Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Treating Patients with Borderline Personality
Disorders in an Outpatient Setting in Taiwan: The Pilot Experience in Asia

Shu-I Wu

Mackay Memorial Hospital, Department of Psychiatry and Suicide Prevention Center, Taiwan

Background/Objective: Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a multi-model psychotherapy for
treating difficult patients with borderline personality disorders (BPD). Despite the fact that DBT has
long been practiced and has accumulated considerable research in the West (Linehan et al., 1991;
Linehan et al., 2006), no other countries or general hospitals in Asia have had therapists completed
the formal team-based training process except the DBT team from Mackay Memorial Hospital in
Taiwan. Therefore, the aim of this presentation is to share the pilot experience, the efficacy, and
difficulty of implementing DBT in a general hospital in Taiwan.

Method: Training stages, treatment infrastructures, different modules, actual implementations, and
preliminary results from pilot studies will be presented in this Symposium.

Result: All treatment modalities of DBT: a weekly individual and group session, available telephone
consultation, and DBT consultation team, have been provided by 13 DBT therapists of the mental
health services in Mackay Memorial Hospital. All therapists had at least 3 years of experience in
BPD treatment using DBT and at least 5 years clinical experiences and have to attend therapists’
consultation team meeting weekly to receive peer supervision during the intervention. From year
2010 to 2014, a total of 2510 hours of DBT individual psychotherapy have been delivered; and a 445
times of DBT Skills Training Group have been held. We have also established the first ‘Booster’
session and ‘DBT- Friends and Family group’ in Asia since the year 2014.

Conclusion: The finding that BPD patients improved significantly after receiving DBT in our pilot
trial suggests DBT in Taiwan works as effective as it is in Western countries. Future research on
randomized control trials exploring the efficacy of DBT among Chinese patients with BPD is
required. Further clinical implications will also be discussed.

Reference: Linehan, M.M., Armstrong, H. E., Suarez, A., et al., 1991. Cognitive behavioral
treatment of chronically parasuicidal borderline patients. Archives of General Psychiatry 48,
1060-1064.
Linehan, M.M., Comtois, K.A., Nurray, A.M., Brown, M.Z., Gallop, R.J., et al., 2006. Two-year
randomized controlled trial and follow up of dialectical behavior therapy vs therapy by experts for
suicidal behavior and borderline personality disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry 63, 757-766.