Common Errors Made by Therapists Providing Telephone Consultation in Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Telephone consultation is an integral mode of the comprehensive treatment in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). The mode of telephone consultation functions primarily to ensure that the skills learned in skills training group and the solutions created in DBT individual psychotherapy generalize to the client's environment. However, there are many ways that telephone consultation in DBT can fail. Most of the errors in telephone consultation are mistakes in contingency management. The primary purpose of this paper is to dispel some of the common errors that are made by therapists providing DBT telephone consultation.