This manual provides a framework for implementing a stepped care model in settings where access to specialized treatments is limited. The authors contend that the principles of good psychiatric management (GPM) represent a basic foundation that combined with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) progress can indeed be realized.

Good Psychiatric Management and Dialectical Behavior Therapy: A Clinician's Guide to Integration and Stepped Care presents a unique approach to treating borderline personality disorder (BPD). The approach, known as good psychiatric management (GPM), requires minimal training, is flexible, and is feasible for generalists to learn and use. However, the guide also draws upon the essential concepts and tools of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), which is considered a gold standard for BPD treatment. This combination of GPM, which is easy to master, and the fundamental techniques of DBT constitutes an accessible, useful, and evidence-based model that clinicians can use to deliver quality care. The guide is organized around basic skills, condensing current scientific research and explaining how GPM is used--with different patient populations, in conjunction with different modalities, by different professions, and in different treatment settings. Given BPD's morbidity and mortality and the limited efficacy of standard treatment, nonspecialists have been understandably hesitant to treat these patients. Moreover, newer and promising treatment options require a significant amount of training, supervision, and time to learn and implement.

This book is designed to address that dilemma. Good Psychiatric Management and Dialectical Behavior Therapy provides general psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, and mental health nurses, family doctors and psychiatry residents with the skills they need to manage BPD, ensuring that patients who might otherwise lack treatment receive the care they need.