The Speaker for October will be Dr. Dorit Saberi, Supervising Psychologist of the AMI/ABLE Program and Associate Professor UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Saberi will be speaking about Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and the Friends and Family Program.

DBT is a psychotherapy treatment program first developed for treating Borderline Personality Disorder but has now been used to treat other forms of mental illness. This approach works towards helping people increase their emotional and cognitive regulation by learning about the triggers that lead to reactive states and helping to assess which coping skills to apply in the sequence of events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to help avoid undesired reactions. DBT assumes that people are doing their best but lack the skills needed to succeed, or are influenced by positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement that interferes with their ability to function appropriately.

The Friends and Family program is for family members and friends of a person with a mental illness that helps them to communicate more effectively with their loved ones and to better handle difficult situations. Please come to learn about DBT and how it is used in the Friends and Family Program.

The Caring and Sharing Support Groups will meet at 6 PM and the regular speaker meeting at 7:30 PM will meet at the First Lutheran Church 2900 Carson in Torrance.