DBT Teams: Development and Practice: A Translator’s Preface by Songhee Chae
In 2007, I first met Marsha Linehan, the developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Her deep commitment to people in suffering, her quiet willingness to stay beside them without turning away from their pain, and the way she practiced mindfulness in her own life helped me understand that DBT is more than a treatment method. It is also a way of living and an ethical practice.
The DBT Essential Workshop that later took place in Korea with Dr. Linehan remains a deeply meaningful memory. It was an important opportunity to introduce DBT in Korea in a more substantial way.
After the workshop, Dr. Linehan encouraged us to create a program through which Korean mental health professionals could experience DBT directly. Her words became a quiet guide for the years that followed. Over the past two decades, Yong Cho, PhD, and the DBT Center have worked to carry out the meaning of that advice through education, clinical practice, translation, and international collaboration. These efforts have been part of a long commitment to ensuring that DBT does not remain a one-time learning experience, but continues as a living treatment in actual clinical settings.
My ongoing connection with Jennifer Sayrs, PhD, a student of Dr. Linehan, has been another profound source of learning. Dr. Sayrs is a clinician who brings a validating stance to her work. Even in the face of complex and difficult questions, she can seek balanced answers through a dialectical perspective. Her clinical approach and presence have offered me both comfort and reflection and have naturally shown the essence of the kind of relationship that a DBT consultation team seeks to build.
Tony DuBose, PhD, who has led DBT clinical teams in Seattle, and Dr. Sayrs, who currently leads Evidence Based Treatment Centers of Seattle (EBTCS), have also been steady supporters in the establishment and development of the DBT Center in Korea. Through collaboration with them, we have been reminded once again that DBT is not sustained by the ability of an individual therapist alone. It can be carried forward with stability only within a team and structure built on shared trust and responsibility.
Within this larger history, Dr. Cho and his colleagues have translated and published several core DBT texts, including DBT Skills Training Manual, Second Edition, DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition, and DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents. Through these works, they have sought to help Korean clinicians come closer to both the theory and practice of DBT. At the same time, through ongoing collaboration with DBT experts around the world, they have continued to explore how DBT can be practiced in ways that fit the clinical realities of Korea.
The Korean edition of DBT Teams: Development and Practice stands on this history of meeting, learning, and long-term clinical practice. I am deeply grateful to be able to share the research and wisdom of those who have quietly lived on the principles of acceptance and change.
Today, in Korea as well, more clinicians are beginning to walk the path of becoming DBT therapists and to stand sincerely with those who are suffering in the dark. I sincerely hope that this book will offer strength for that journey and help more people encounter stable, compassionate, and faithful DBT treatment.
Summer 2025
Translator, Songhee Chae