Announcements
We are now offering a DBT skills group for those on the waiting list! We hope this intervention might itself help alleviate problems in regulating emotion. And if comprehensive DBT is needed, you will not lose your place in line and can transition to that program when available.
News Feed
7/16/22 - New National Crisis Line - Call/Text/Chat 988
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis, 988 provides direct connection to free, confidential, and compassionate support. When you call, text or chat 988, you’ll be quickly connected to trained crisis counselors who will listen to your concerns, provide support, and connect you to additional resources if needed. There is HOPE. The Lifeline WORKS. You are not alone in crisis. For 24/7 confidential support, just call, text, or chat 988. Click HERE for more information.
6/16/20 - Black Lives Matter
There's a whole lot happening and a lot of people are asking us questions about social unrest and racism. I wrote an open letter to the Ebright community and beyond to move the conversation forward. If anyone has any questions, please contact myself or a team member. -- Matt
6/1/20 - WELCOME DEENA GOLDSTEIN, LCSW!
We've recently expanded our DBT team! We are truly grateful to be able to provide comprehensive DBT in Delaware. We hope with a larger team we will be able to meet the need for quality care and evidence-based treatment. Check us out on the about us page!
3/17/20 - COVID-19 UPDATE
Until further notice, we will be conducting treatment online only for both individual and group sessions.
Please review a letter from our founder, some guidelines for telehealth, and some helpful instructions on how to use telehealth.
Please review a letter from our founder, some guidelines for telehealth, and some helpful instructions on how to use telehealth.
Please contact us for any additional information or contact your therapist. You can also sign up to our newsletter below for any updated information. Thank you.
6/21/19 - Ebright Community Mindfulness Group
Almost a year ago, we hosted a weekend mindfulness retreat in honor of our 5-year anniversary of providing DBT to the community. One of our hopes was to inspire others to consider sharing their experience of mindfulness by learning to teach it in the community. We cannot tell you how excited we were when we found out one to the attendants at the retreat would be receiving training to formally teach mindfulness. On top of that, they also offered to volunteer their time to teach mindfulness to the community at Ebright! We would like to personally thank Heather who has volunteered countless hours practicing mindfulness at Ebright to the Delaware community. While she will be taking time off for the summer (our last mindfulness group will be on 6/25/19), it has been a dream for us to offer this service to DE. We hope to offer more services like this at Ebright in the future! Thank you again, Heather, for the part you have played to help others along their journey!
For anyone who got a lot out of the Mindfulness group or would like to learn more about mindfulness, Heather has kindly volunteered her email to continue to offer resources and guidance in the practice of Mindfulness. Feel free to reach out to [email protected]
For anyone who got a lot out of the Mindfulness group or would like to learn more about mindfulness, Heather has kindly volunteered her email to continue to offer resources and guidance in the practice of Mindfulness. Feel free to reach out to [email protected]
Additionally, If you are interested in continuing your mindfulness practice and not sure where to turn, try out this book and consider joining the Online Tergar Learning Community. We hope you find their practice as helpful as it has been for us.
https://learning.tergar.org/about/
Here is a short blurb from their website:
"Meditation is a simple, powerful method that you can use to open your heart, train your mind, and transform your world from the inside out. The Tergar Learning Community (TLC) is the place for you to learn more about the ancient practice of meditation.
It doesn’t matter if you are just getting started or have been meditating for years. Take a few minutes to explore our online learning community. You’ll find plenty of opportunities to deepen your understanding of meditation, connect with other meditators around the world, and inspire your practice with the profound teachings of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and other remarkable teachers. We hope this site will help you find new ways to explore the landscape of your heart and mind with mindful awareness."
https://learning.tergar.org/about/
Here is a short blurb from their website:
"Meditation is a simple, powerful method that you can use to open your heart, train your mind, and transform your world from the inside out. The Tergar Learning Community (TLC) is the place for you to learn more about the ancient practice of meditation.
It doesn’t matter if you are just getting started or have been meditating for years. Take a few minutes to explore our online learning community. You’ll find plenty of opportunities to deepen your understanding of meditation, connect with other meditators around the world, and inspire your practice with the profound teachings of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and other remarkable teachers. We hope this site will help you find new ways to explore the landscape of your heart and mind with mindful awareness."
8/24/18 - Ebright 5 Year Anniversary Weekend
It was a joy and honor to celebrate our 5 year anniversary with those who attended. On behalf of our team, we were touched by the amount of people who were able to attend and those who were willing to participate. You're stories served as a moving reminder of how powerful the skills can be in one's life.
As promised, we wanted to share with you the activity we participated in to encourage those who are still in the process of learning skills in our program. (For those not in attendance, we all took a moment to write an encouraging word or statement on a leaf cutout that would be displayed in our group room). Below is a picture of this project, along with the description which hangs next to it.
As promised, we wanted to share with you the activity we participated in to encourage those who are still in the process of learning skills in our program. (For those not in attendance, we all took a moment to write an encouraging word or statement on a leaf cutout that would be displayed in our group room). Below is a picture of this project, along with the description which hangs next to it.
On the weekend of August 24, 2018, the Ebright Collaborative hosted a 5-year Anniversary celebration to honor over 120 people who have committed to pursuing a life worth living. In attendance were those from all walks of life, including current clients, DBT graduates, staff, family, and others from the community. In an act of communal togetherness, this event was memorialized by each member taking a moment to acknowledge both the suffering and dedication of all those who go through these rooms. A word of encouragement was written upon each leaf placed on this tree.
You are not alone.
“May you be happy. May you be at peace. May you be healthy. May you be safe.”
5/31/18 - Certifiable
Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Ditty for becoming Linehan Board Certified in DBT! Matt has been instrumental in training so many clinicians in DBT and overseeing the implementation of DBT at Ebright. While you don't need a certification to know his DBT abilities are top notch, it's great to acknowledge him as officially certified anyway. Well done!
4/24/18 - Certifiable
Congratulations to John Bickel, Ebright's first therapist to officially become Linehan Board Certified in DBT. To accomplish this, John had to be intensively trained in DBT, pass an exam, cultivate a personal mindfulness practice, submit a case formulation for review, and have video-taped therapy sessions coded for adherence. We are so proud of John, as well as Ebright's ability to develop such competent therapists!
12/9/16 - This one's for the research nerds...
Oh boy. A LOT is happening at Ebright! Too much to outline here. For now, let's just continue focusing on what's important, how clients are doing.
Nerd alert! I conducted a statistical analysis - a paired t-test - on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) scores for our graduates. Not only are our graduates seeing remarkable improvements in emotion regulation, but they actually report fewer difficulties in emotion regulation on average than the general public (M=77.2) when they graduate. We love the DERS because it's associated with suicidality, self-harm, eating disordered behavior, addiction, mood and anxiety, academic performance, and more. Basically, one's ability to regulate emotions impacts all the stuff so many of our clients struggle with. Check out these beautiful, beautiful numbers!
Nerd alert! I conducted a statistical analysis - a paired t-test - on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) scores for our graduates. Not only are our graduates seeing remarkable improvements in emotion regulation, but they actually report fewer difficulties in emotion regulation on average than the general public (M=77.2) when they graduate. We love the DERS because it's associated with suicidality, self-harm, eating disordered behavior, addiction, mood and anxiety, academic performance, and more. Basically, one's ability to regulate emotions impacts all the stuff so many of our clients struggle with. Check out these beautiful, beautiful numbers!
Null hypothesis REJECTED! If you don't know what any of this means, it essentially says we can be more than 99.9% certain that graduates as a whole significantly improve by the end of treatment (we have a lot more client specific data, but the DERS is just so applicable to every single client who comes to us).
Now for some bad news. On one hand, 40 graduates (i.e. people who have completed their initial 6-month or year-long contract) is a lot. On the other, it's not nearly enough. We started as a small program in October 2013, and DBT takes a long time. We graduated just 6 clients the first year, growing each year as we've added more therapists and uncovered more funding sources. We have more than 40 clients in treatment right now, so we expect the number of graduates to grow exponentially as we expand, and the impact of our work to only get better as we continue to refine our DBT provision.
To current and future clients who also understand statistics, please let this be incentive to graduate. DBT can be hard, like running a marathon. And just like training for a marathon, you will likely have urges to quit along the way. Yet this data represents just some of the evidence we have for why you should hang in there!
Now for some bad news. On one hand, 40 graduates (i.e. people who have completed their initial 6-month or year-long contract) is a lot. On the other, it's not nearly enough. We started as a small program in October 2013, and DBT takes a long time. We graduated just 6 clients the first year, growing each year as we've added more therapists and uncovered more funding sources. We have more than 40 clients in treatment right now, so we expect the number of graduates to grow exponentially as we expand, and the impact of our work to only get better as we continue to refine our DBT provision.
To current and future clients who also understand statistics, please let this be incentive to graduate. DBT can be hard, like running a marathon. And just like training for a marathon, you will likely have urges to quit along the way. Yet this data represents just some of the evidence we have for why you should hang in there!
6/8/16 - Ebright in the Newspaper!
11/12/15 - All settled in!
It's been a while since updating the newsfeed. This has nothing to do with a lack of news and everything to do with too much news to keep up! Here's some of what you missed:
-We're all settled into the new building, with two open houses under our belt and everything!
-Matt was quoted by The News Journal in a story about a teen's project to prevent suicide.
-Matt presented research at the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration in September.
-Matt presented the same research to Marsha Linehan's DBT Strategic Planning Committee in October.
-Matt will be providing an overview of DBT at New Directions on Monday, 11/16 at 7:15 at 2313 Concord Pike.
-We're all settled into the new building, with two open houses under our belt and everything!
-Matt was quoted by The News Journal in a story about a teen's project to prevent suicide.
-Matt presented research at the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration in September.
-Matt presented the same research to Marsha Linehan's DBT Strategic Planning Committee in October.
-Matt will be providing an overview of DBT at New Directions on Monday, 11/16 at 7:15 at 2313 Concord Pike.
6/25/15 - New address coming soon + name change.
Exciting news is happening at breakneck speed! As of 6/23/15, we officially have a new building and we will be moving in sometime in July (provided construction of the interior goes smoothly). The new address will be at 607 W. 18th St., Wilmington, DE 19802. Written correspondence with Ebright can occur at either location until we move in. We're really excited for mid-day jaunts to the zoo, mindful walks in Brandywine State Park, and playful romps with puppies in the dog park! We worked hard to find a location that is accessible to people of all socio-economic statuses, and we think our new location checks off all the right boxes.
We are also pleased to announce that we will be changing our name from "The Ebright Foundation" to "The Ebright Collaborative." We are doing this for two reasons. First, we had originally intended to be structured as a private foundation. We still may end up doing this, but we are unsure at this juncture. Being named as a foundation locks us in, which we are not ready to do. So we wish to be transparent and clear with the public about who we are. Second, we like the idea of including the concept of collaboration in our name. No matter our official structure, we want to foster collaboration in all we do - collaboration among staff, clients, the community, the state, and anyone who wishes to be involved with our mission of building lives worth living in Delaware!
We have also received some questions about "Ebright." The Ebright Azimuth is the point of highest elevation in Delaware. We thought this would be a pleasant, poetic image of what we are trying to achieve. It ties us to Delaware and conjures images of raising us all up to higher levels. Our logo (seen at the bottom of every Website page) depicts a hill. Building a life worth living can be an uphill struggle that is totally worth all the effort and hard work!
Matt's personal life-worth-living goal has been to find a home for Ebright. Moving to this building is just one more sign that we are doing exactly what we have set out to do. Uphill climbs for fostering lives-worth-living are happening all over the place, and not just among clients!
We are also pleased to announce that we will be changing our name from "The Ebright Foundation" to "The Ebright Collaborative." We are doing this for two reasons. First, we had originally intended to be structured as a private foundation. We still may end up doing this, but we are unsure at this juncture. Being named as a foundation locks us in, which we are not ready to do. So we wish to be transparent and clear with the public about who we are. Second, we like the idea of including the concept of collaboration in our name. No matter our official structure, we want to foster collaboration in all we do - collaboration among staff, clients, the community, the state, and anyone who wishes to be involved with our mission of building lives worth living in Delaware!
We have also received some questions about "Ebright." The Ebright Azimuth is the point of highest elevation in Delaware. We thought this would be a pleasant, poetic image of what we are trying to achieve. It ties us to Delaware and conjures images of raising us all up to higher levels. Our logo (seen at the bottom of every Website page) depicts a hill. Building a life worth living can be an uphill struggle that is totally worth all the effort and hard work!
Matt's personal life-worth-living goal has been to find a home for Ebright. Moving to this building is just one more sign that we are doing exactly what we have set out to do. Uphill climbs for fostering lives-worth-living are happening all over the place, and not just among clients!
6/5/15 - New office. New therapists!
Welcome aboard Carson and Terry-An (see their profiles shortly). Both have experience in DBT and we're excited to have them! Carson comes to us from NYC after working with Andre Ivanoff, the director of Behavior Tech, LLC, the DBT training company founded by Marsha Linehan. Terry-An provided a DBT adaptation for schools in Philadelphia (see the work of the Mazza's for more information). Our team is getting bigger and stronger, and we're slowly but surely accomplishing our goal of bringing high quality, comprehensive DBT to Delaware!
Stay tuned for more exciting news...
Stay tuned for more exciting news...
5/5/15 - Awesomeness. Rinse and repeat.
We just had another handful of graduates with large changes in their emotion regulation abilities, increases in skillfulness, visible behavioral change, verbal verification of having better lives, and tangible evidence of being on a path toward fulfilling life-worth-living goals. This is so cool!
One phenomenon other DBT programs have encountered is that once a program gets off the ground, it develops its own energy and draws people to it. That phenomenon appears to be happening for Ebright. Just as we have a waiting list for clients, we also now have more therapists who want to join us than we know what to do with. The problem? We don't have enough office space to house the therapists.
So the team is currently using problem-solving skills to work on this, and we have some potentially awesome solutions already in motion. Stay tuned...
One phenomenon other DBT programs have encountered is that once a program gets off the ground, it develops its own energy and draws people to it. That phenomenon appears to be happening for Ebright. Just as we have a waiting list for clients, we also now have more therapists who want to join us than we know what to do with. The problem? We don't have enough office space to house the therapists.
So the team is currently using problem-solving skills to work on this, and we have some potentially awesome solutions already in motion. Stay tuned...
2/16/15 - After DBT is launched.
One of the first graduates of Stage 1 DBT at Ebright offered to create a peer-led site for graduates to support each other in a lifetime of skillfulness. It is officially up and running. Yay!! If you are a graduate and you and your therapists agree that continued pursuit of DBT skillfulness could be effective, then simply follow the link, register, and an Ebright staff will approve you as having met this criteria. The creator of the site is asking for feedback, so please let her know what you think of the site and what you would like from it.
12/17/14 - How our clients are doing after one year.
DBT usually involves one year of treatment. Because we started our first skills group in December 2013, all members of the first group have officially finished DBT. We now have tangible evidence that our clients are actually building lives worth living. For example, when clients come to Ebright, they report an average Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) score of 120.2 (more than two standard deviations above the average score for the general population). Our first set of graduates averaged a DERS score of 124.2 when arriving and 71.5 when ending treatment (meaning our first set of graduates reported FEWER difficulties in emotion regulation than the general population when they ended). Some have already completed their life-worth-living goals, while others are well on their way!
We also thought this was a good time to reflect on how all of the clients at the Ebright Foundation are doing. We periodically ask our clients to write about what they are getting out of the program. We then ran their reflections through a Word Cloud generator, and the results are posted below (the bigger the word, the more that word was repeated). Notice how "DBT" and "skills" are the largest, as our clients agree that the most helpful thing about our program is the DBT skills. Notice that the next biggest words are "better," "life," and "emotions." This gives us information regarding how the skills are helping our clients. In essence, our clients are saying that DBT skills are helping them have better lives and emotions.
We also thought this was a good time to reflect on how all of the clients at the Ebright Foundation are doing. We periodically ask our clients to write about what they are getting out of the program. We then ran their reflections through a Word Cloud generator, and the results are posted below (the bigger the word, the more that word was repeated). Notice how "DBT" and "skills" are the largest, as our clients agree that the most helpful thing about our program is the DBT skills. Notice that the next biggest words are "better," "life," and "emotions." This gives us information regarding how the skills are helping our clients. In essence, our clients are saying that DBT skills are helping them have better lives and emotions.
12/04/14 - Andrea Doyle joins the team.
We're excited to announce that we have added another therapist to the team. Andrea is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches a week-long intensive DBT course to MSW students. She has spent eight years working in Marsha Linehan's lab at the University of Washington, and she was Matt's dissertation adviser. Welcome aboard Andrea!
10/7/14 - The Ebright Foundation, LLC has a publication!
Matt researched how to implement a DBT program. That research was accepted for publication in the journal Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research. The title of the article is "It Takes a Village: A Mixed Method Analysis of Inner Setting Variables and Dialectical Behavior Therapy Implementation." While that's a whole lot of nerd words, the key findings were that DBT program implementation is largely a social process, and the people who implement it should like each other, communicate well, share common goals, and have high-quality supervision. This is a neat finding because many people worry about DBT being too resource-intensive to implement, which contributes to it being offered in so few places (even though DBT saves $5,000 - $30,000 on average per client). Yet the most important resources necessary for making it happen may actually be stuff like commitment and human kindness. This research is important to The Ebright Foundation, which essentially began as an application of this study.
