Francheska Perepletchikova is a clinical psychologist and founder of world-leading therapy modality DBT-C.
Meet Dr. Francheska
Francheska Perepletchikova, Ph.D., DBT-Linehan Board certified clinician, is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School. She specializes in psychological services for children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation, including suicidality and non-suicidal self-injury, severe verbal and physical aggression, treatment-resistant depression, social phobia, and generalized anxiety. Dr. Perepletchikova received training in child and adolescent therapy under the mentorship of Dr. Alan Kazdin as a graduate student at the Yale University, Department of Psychology. She started to gain expertise in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) during internship and post-doctoral training at the Yale University School of Medicine with Dr. Seth Axelrod, working with patients with borderline personality disorder with co-morbid substance use. As an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Perepletchikova received intensive and advanced intensive trainings in DBT with the Linehan Institute Behavioral Tech, LLC and in 2009, she was established as able to deliver DBT with adherence and calibrated as a reliable DBT adherence rater by the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics at the University of Washington. Since then, Dr. Perepletchikova have been providing clinical care to adults and adolescents within the DBT model and adapted DBT for preadolescent children with severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation (DBT-C). As an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the Yale University School and Medicine and at the Weill Cornell Medicine, she completed two randomized clinical trials on DBT-C. Results of both trials indicated that children in DBT-C condition, as compared to treatment-as-usual, had a significantly greater reduction in behavior outbursts and angry/irritable mood, and achieved a significantly higher level of functioning.
Francheska Perepletchikova, Ph.D,
DBT-C Developer and trainer
Since the inception of that program of research. Dr. Perepletchikova published multiple papers and book chapters on DBT and DBT-C and conducted over 80 conference presentations, lectures, webinars, and workshops on the model. For many years, she served on the conference organizing committees for the National Educational Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder and the International Society for Improvement and Teaching of DBT. Dr. Perepletchikova developed a national and international reputation as a DBT trainer, we well as DBT-C developer and researcher. She was invited to train clinicians around the globe, including USA, Austria, Spain, Norway, Germany, England, Australia, and Latin America. Dr. Perepletchikova has a contract with Guilford Press to publish two books – DBT-C Treatment Manual for Therapists (with Marsha Linehan) and DBT-C Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets (with Seth Axelrod).
In 2015, given her expertise in DBT, Dr. Perepletchikova was invited by the Linehan Institute Behavioral Tech, LLC to become a DBT trainer and consultant. Since it was founded in 2002 by Marsha Linehan, only about sixty DBT researchers and clinicians have been invited by the company to become Behavioral Tech trainers. In the seven years in her capacity as a Behavioral Tech trainer, she co-led 15 workshops on DBT and DBT-C with the company. She is also providing consultations to DBT teams around the world, including USA, Russia, Norway and Latin America. In 2018, since its inception, Dr. Perepletchikova became a member of the International DBT Strategic Planning Group. This group consists of DBT experts with the most outstanding experience and dedication to DBT and serves as a steering committee to guide DBT development, training and research.
Over the past decade, Dr. Perepletchikova demonstrated a continuous commitment to actively mentor in DBT. In 2012, she joined a faculty of the Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry. In that capacity, she provided direct clinical care, as well as training and supervision of postdoctoral fellows, pre-doctoral trainees, externs and staff. As a faculty at WCM, she served as a Director of the Outpatient Adolescent DBT Program and as a DBT team leader at the WCM Westchester Division Outpatient Department.
In 2019, Dr. Perepletchikova founded a Youth-Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program (Y-DBT). This program serves children, adolescents and young adults with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, depression, substance use, and posttraumatic stress disorder, with a specialization in suicidality and non-suicidal self-injury. Y-DBT program provides individual therapy, skills training, family therapy and parent training. Further, she is a founding director of DBT-C Center of Training and Guidance, LLC that specializes in training workshops tor clinicians and parents around the world, as well as consultations and supervisions on the approach.
