Wavefront Program

The Wavefront Program offers comprehensive care focused on improving emotion regulation in children and young people impacted by suicidal thoughts and behaviors; self-harm; or mood, anxiety, trauma and obsessive-compulsive-related disorders. We provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in both individual and group settings.

In addition, our specialists are active in research to better understand these conditions in the young and to enhance strategies for managing them.

Our CBT program

Research has shown that CBT is one of the most effective treatments for young patients, including children, with depression or anxiety. CBT is usually a short-term treatment that explores how thoughts, feelings and behaviors are connected and affect one another, and helps people develop coping skills to manage their problems.

For patients receiving individual care, we perform an assessment to ensure CBT is appropriate for them, then do evaluations periodically during treatment to assess their progress. Individual CBT typically consists of education about psychological diagnoses and treatments, collaborative goal-setting, and development of both cognitive and behavioral strategies for addressing symptoms and preventing relapses. Depending on the patient's age and needs, parental involvement is often a key component of treatment. We take a collaborative approach to care, and patients are expected to do homework as part of their treatment, applying skills learned in therapy sessions to their real lives.

We offer several targeted group therapy options, including groups for teenagers, children ages 9 to 12 with anxiety, patients with social anxiety, and young people struggling with self-injury or suicidal ideation (contemplating or planning suicide).

We also offer single-session workshops for parents of children and young adults with anxiety and depression. These workshops provide information on symptoms, how parents can help and available treatment options.

Our DBT program

Our DBT clinic cares for high-risk adolescents and young adults, who commonly suffer from multiple mental health issues. We specialize in identifying and treating depression and risky behaviors, including self-injury, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, substance use, binge-purge eating, risky sexual behavior, physical fighting, and other self-destructive thoughts or patterns.

Our approach has been shown effective for self-harming adolescents with depression who demonstrate some traits of borderline personality disorder beyond that expected as part of typical adolescent development. We focus on the following areas:

• Confusion about self
• Emotional instability
• Impulsivity
• Interpersonal problems
• Parent-teen problems

Our program has four components:

• Weekly multifamily skills group (24 weeks). Patients and families learn techniques for coping with problem areas and for lessening the behaviors they've identified to work on (for example, cutting or purging).
• Weekly individual therapy. Patients learn to use the skills they’re learning in group therapy to gain insight into their problematic behaviors, looking at their habitual ways of thinking and risky choices.
• Family therapy. Therapists schedule family sessions as needed.
• Coaching by phone. Patients are encouraged to contact their therapists for skills coaching before engaging in a behavior they’re trying to change. Parents learn the same skills as their child, including techniques to improve how the family functions, and they are encouraged to call their group leaders for skills support as well.

We also consult with several agencies in the Bay Area, including behavioral health centers in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties. We aim to increase access to DBT for suicidal youths, and we provide professional trainings on proven practices for assessing and managing suicide risk.

Since our team advocates to implement these research-backed therapies more broadly, we hold our programs to the same rigorous standards that we use for our research studies and we apply the same evaluation protocol to judge their effectiveness. Along with the effective use of technology and a focus on health care process improvement, this evaluation is the foundation for our research program dedicated to enhancing and expanding behavioral therapy for youths struggling with depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

We currently offer services only in San Francisco. For information on CBT and DBT in Oakland, please call (510) 428-8428.