Group Therapy
By Clinical Design collaborates with many systems in helping to address factors that often contribute to individuals involvement with the mental health system, the child welfare system, and the criminal justice system. Factors such as inability to regulate one's own emotions, interpersonal ineffectiveness, sometimes even interpersonal violence, and engagement in substance abuse and addiction.
It is often said that the best part of being in a group is that you don't have to do everything alone. In fact, often times it is found that group dynamics foster learning, growth and generalization of skills faster than individual therapy. At By Clinical Design, we harness this dynamic in our delivery of therapeutic groups. Our group participants are often referred from schools, probation and parole officers, and family and children's service workers. All groups listed below are offered for both adult and adolescent populations.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Group
Dialectical Behaviour therapy as designed by Dr. Marsha Linehan and adapted for adolescents by Dr. Alec Miller, has been successfully applied to individuals struggling with an inability to manage their emotions, tolerate stress in their lives without making situations worse, and develop and maintain healthy relationships. It utilizes cognitive-behavioural strategies combined with validation and mindfulness, to help individuals replace problem behaviours with skillful ones.
The DBT Multifamily Skills Group recognizes that family members also struggle when they are living with and supporting a loved one with challenges. This group helps parents, guardians, or siblings to understand and effectively help their loved one become more adaptive in managing day to day emotions and behaviours, while also learning some adaptive coping skills for their own self.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy – Emotion Regulation and Substance Use
Cognitive Therapy has been effectively used to address the factors that relate to the development and maintenance of substance use disorders. It focuses on changing the dysfunctional thoughts, impulsivity and unmanageable emotional roller coasters that often accompany substance misuse. Cognitive Therapy believes that substance abuse is learned, and, therefore, it can be "unlearned" and stopped through the use of cognitive-behavioural techniques. Understandably, a person with a substance misuse faces many challenges, and often substance misuse is not the only issue the individual is facing. By engaging in this program an individual can take part in an effective, flexible, and evidence based therapy within a respectful and collaborative therapeutic relationship, which can facilitate the change within themselves they are seeking.
Healthy Relationships