Southside DBT Launches Specialized Teen DBT Program to Address Georgia’s Growing Adolescent Mental Health Crisis

United States 5/11/2026 Southside DBT has announced the formal launch of a teen-specific Dialectical Behavior Therapy program serving adolescents across Georgia through its existing telehealth platform. The program is designed to meet a gap that families across the state have been dealing with for years: the near-absence of board-certified, adolescent-adapted DBT care outside of a handful of metro Atlanta providers. With this launch, Southside DBT extends its evidence-based DBT services to teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 and their families, with availability across all telehealth-eligible areas of Georgia including Macon, Columbus, Savannah, and the broader Atlanta Metro region.

Kelly Pinnick, the practice’s founder and a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification Certified Clinician, will lead the teen program directly. Pinnick brings more than a decade of clinical experience working with adolescents and adults dealing with emotional dysregulation, self-harm, suicidality, and trauma-related conditions. The teen program reflects both her clinical background and her long-standing commitment to delivering the full DBT model rather than a modified or partial version of it.

The Crisis Driving This Launch

Georgia’s adolescent mental health data has not been moving in a good direction. Emergency department visits for teenagers in mental health crisis have risen sharply across the state over the past several years. School systems report that the volume of students experiencing depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal thinking has outpaced what counseling staff can realistically address. Pediatricians are increasingly the first point of contact for families whose teenagers are struggling, and many of them do not have a clear pathway to refer those families to specialized mental health care.

The reasons behind this trend are not difficult to identify. The pandemic years disrupted adolescent social development in ways that have not fully resolved. Teenagers who spent important developmental years with limited peer interaction, disrupted schooling, and increased household stress are now dealing with the demands of adolescence with fewer internal resources than they would otherwise have. Social media continues to change how teenagers see themselves and each other in ways that research consistently links to increased rates of anxiety and depression.

DBT is one of the treatments with the strongest evidence base for the specific presentations that are most common in the current adolescent mental health picture. Its skills-based approach to emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness addresses the mechanisms behind the behaviors that families and schools are most concerned about.

Why Adolescent DBT Is Different From Adult DBT

Standard DBT was developed for adults, but the model has been formally adapted for adolescent populations through research carried out over several decades. The teen adaptation maintains the core structure and skill set of standard DBT while incorporating two significant modifications.

The first is developmental. The skills are taught using language, examples, and contexts that are relevant to teenage life rather than adult life. Academic pressure, peer relationships, family conflict, and the specific emotional experiences of adolescence are all built into how the skills are framed and practiced.

The second is structural. The family system is brought into treatment in a way that it is not in adult DBT. Parents and caregivers learn the same skills that their teenager is learning, which serves two purposes. It gives families a shared framework for communication and reduces the invalidation cycles that are common in households with emotionally dysregulated teenagers. And it addresses the family dynamics that contribute to and maintain the teenager’s difficulties, rather than leaving those dynamics unchanged while expecting the teenager alone to do all the work of change.

What the Program Delivers

The Southside DBT teen program is built on the four components of standard DBT, adapted for the adolescent context and delivered via telehealth.

Weekly individual therapy sessions work with each teenager on the specific behaviors that are interfering with their daily functioning. Sessions draw on behavioral chain analysis to identify what is driving problem behaviors and use skills coaching to build more effective responses over time.

Family sessions bring parents and caregivers into the work directly. The middle path component of teen DBT, which teaches families to balance validation of their teenager’s emotional experience with clear expectations around behavior, is a central part of what Southside DBT delivers in this format.

Between-Session Support

Phone coaching is available to teen clients between sessions, following the standard DBT protocol. This component is particularly important for adolescents, who face emotionally activating situations on a daily basis and for whom the week between sessions can be long enough for a real crisis to develop without support.

The coaching calls are short and focused. They are not additional therapy sessions. They are a bridge between sessions that helps teenagers apply a specific skill in a moment of real distress, before a problem behavior occurs. Over time, the repeated experience of reaching out, getting support, and successfully using a skill builds both the skill itself and a more functional relationship with help-seeking.

Reaching Families Across Georgia

The teen program is available to families across Georgia through Southside DBT’s telehealth platform. This matters because the distribution of specialized adolescent mental health care in Georgia is heavily skewed toward Atlanta. Families in other parts of the state, including the Macon, Columbus, and Savannah areas that Southside DBT already serves with its adult program, have had limited access to board-certified DBT care for their teenagers.

Telehealth removes the geographic barrier without reducing the quality of care. Sessions are conducted with the same clinical structure as in-person DBT. The skills are the same. The therapeutic relationship is built in the same way. What changes is that families do not have to drive hours to access it.

Teenagers across Georgia are dealing with real mental health challenges and their families deserve access to treatment that actually addresses what is driving those challenges. This program is about making that level of care available to more families, not just the ones who happen to live close to a specialized provider.

Insurance & How to Get Started

The teen DBT program accepts the same insurance plans as Southside DBT’s adult services: Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Cigna, and United Healthcare through Optum. Billing is handled through Headway, which manages insurance verification and provides superbills for families with out-of-network benefits who wish to pursue reimbursement through their own insurance.

Private pay is available at $150 per session for families whose insurance is not accepted in-network.

Families can reach Southside DBT at kelly@southsidedbt.com or by calling (770) 880-2538 to ask about availability and schedule an initial consultation for their teenager.

About Southside DBT

Southside DBT is a South Metro Atlanta mental health practice specializing in Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adolescents and adults. Founded and led by Kelly Pinnick, a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification Certified Clinician, the practice delivers individual therapy, skills training, phone coaching, and consultation team-supported care via telehealth to clients across Georgia. Southside DBT accepts Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Cigna, and United Healthcare through Optum, and offers superbills for out-of-network reimbursement. More information is available at www.southsidedbt.com. 

Contact: 

Kelly Pinnick
Phone: (770) 880-2538
Email: kelly@southsidedbt.com
Website: www.southsidedbt.com