Dr. Elizabeth Dexter-Mazza  is a certified DBT therapist and co-author of the DBT STEPS-A social emotional learning curriculum for middle and high school students. She received her doctoral degree from the School of Professional Psychology at Pacific University in 2004, and completed her predoctoral internship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center’s Adolescent Depression and Suicide Program. Dr. Dexter-Mazza completed her postdoctoral fellowship under the direction of Dr. Marsha Linehan at the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics (BRTC) at the University of Washington. While at the BRTC, she was the Clinical Director and a research therapist for Dr. Linehan’s research studies, which provided both individual DBT and DBT group skills training. She has published several book chapters and peer reviewed articles on DBT, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and graduate school training in how to manage suicidal clients. Dr. Dexter-Mazza is a licensed psychologist and maintains a private practice in Seattle, providing comprehensive DBT and skills based coaching and support to family members and friends of individuals with BPD. 

Dr. Dexter-Mazza provides individual therapy to adolescents, young adults, adults and parent coaching. She has been providing DBT since 2000 and is considered an expert in training mental health professionals around the world in DBT. She also provides consultation on the implementation of DBT and DBT STEPS-A to clinicians and schools.

Dr. Dexter-Mazza specializes in providing treatment for the following areas:

• Suicide and Non-suicidal self-injurious behaviors (e.g., self-harm behaviors)
• Borderline Personality Disorder
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other related trauma disorders
• Problems with Emotion Regulation
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Parent Coaching for parents of adolescents and adult children

Dr. James J. Mazza is the co-author of the DBT STEPS-A social emotional learning curriculum for middle and high school students. He received his masters and Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.  He is a professor at the University of Washington – Seattle where he has been for the past 20 years teaching and conducting research in the field of adolescent mental health.  Dr. Mazza’s research interests focus particularly on adolescent internalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, exposure to violence and especially suicidal behavior. His research examines the complex relationships of how mental health issues impact adolescent social emotional abilities and academic skills through a multitiered system of supports (MTSS).  Dr. Mazza’s research has focused on school-based settings and has written extensively through peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on how to identify youth who are at-risk for suicidal behavior as well as developing social emotional learning (SEL) curricula to help all students learn emotion regulation skills.  Dr. Mazza has worked with over 30 school districts and thousands of school personnel in developing and implementing comprehensive suicidal identification and prevention strategies for school-based adolescents.