Adult mental health : psychological therapies and interventions

STEPPS is a 20-week Basic Skills Group based on the approach originally developed by Bartels and Crotty (1992) and adapted and revised by Blum, St John and Pfol (2002).  The acronym stands for Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving.  It is highly recommended by the Scottish govt. and NHS document “A Guide to Delivering Evidence Based Psychological Therapies in Scotland – The Matrix”.  

This CBT skills training approach sees Personality Disorder with Borderline Pattern as a disorder of emotion and behaviour regulation, and the programme aims to increase the common understanding of the disorder, and of the skills that can be developed to help cope with it, between the person themselves, their families and the professionals working with them.  Primarily it teaches emotion and behaviour management skills to replace maladaptive behavioural coping strategies with more effective ones; and alongside this it identifies key professionals, friends and family members to become the person’s reinforcement team who will help the individual to generalise the use of these skills.