A. While I do not have any hard statistics on how the use of DBT has decreased the number or frequency of inpatient hospitalizations, I witnessed this when I worked in a community emergency services department for several years. In that setting, the use of DBT was optimal, as we trained all disciplines (psychiatry, nursing, crisis workers, case managers, etc.) on DBT and whomever interfaced with the client used the skills with him or her. All clients diagnosed with BPD were asked to attend a weekly skills training group and several of them went through the group multiple times. During that period, I did observe less frequent calls to the hotline and inpatient hospitalizations.
One idea might be to offer an ongoing DBT group from the hospital on an outpatient basis and see if this gets to your target population. Another idea is to use DBT on an inpatient basis, but from my perspective, this has drawbacks in the sense that DBT is ideally offered as a comprehensive program, and not "piecemeal". Most patients would likely get a small portion of DBT while in the hospital, but not really have a way to apply or reinforce those ideas once they're discharged.
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