At Yorktown High School, we believe that student mental health and wellbeing are essential to academic and life successes for our student body. We offer a number of programs available to students to learn about their mental health and the necessary skills to cope with life's stresses in a productive manner and live a life worth living.
DBT skills teach people how to:
Regulate emotions and behaviors
Reduce problematic behaviors (things you want to improve about yourself) and increase skillfulness in managing those behaviors
Experience a range of emotions - without acting on those emotions
Improve relationships with family, school and friends
What does Dialectical mean?
Dialectical means that two opposing ideas can be true at the same time - when we consider them together, we can create a new truth and a new perspective and way of viewing the same exact situation
There is always more than one way to think about a situation! We can do so by, shifting our thinking from either/or to both-and. This way of thinking can improve relationships and reduce conflict.
The Yorktown Central School District has partnered with Cognitive Behavioral Consultants as part of a district-wide initiative that will focus on school-based mental health well being. This comprehensive program will utilize research based principles of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which has been adapted specifically for schools.
The DBT school-based curriculum will focus on the acquisition and practice of skills for emotional management and decision making. The focus of DBT will be to provide students with strategies to help them in the areas of relationships, decision making, responsibility, self awareness and managing emotional responses. DBT Skills group is part of a multimodal approach that focuses on mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness.
The DBT Consultation Team
Ms. DiGregorio, School Social Worker
Ms. Faulkner, School Social Worker
Ms. Fink, School Counselor
Ms. John, School Social Worker
Ms. Loughran, Student Assistance Counselor
Ms. Mackenzie, School Psychologist
Dr. Lalia, School Psychologist
Ms. Wellington, School Psychologist