21/10/2025
On our series "Meet The EDBTA board" we introduce our new board members elected at the General Assembly in Gdańsk (10 May 2025).
Dr. Amy Gaglia Essletzbichler began her DBT journey in the early 1990s during a 10-month internship at New York Hospital, at a time when Dialectical Behavior Therapy was still little known. Working in a day hospital and outpatient setting, she was immediately drawn to Marsha Linehan’s compassionate, feminist approach — one that treated people often dismissed or misunderstood with deep respect and curiosity. That formative experience shaped the path of her career. Over the decades, Dr. Gaglia has worked across adult and adolescent services, supporting clients with substance use, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress, and complex emotion regulation difficulties. Now mostly based in the United Kingdom, she focuses primarily on training, supervising, and mentoring DBT clinicians across varied clinical settings. Her work emphasizes adherence, accessibility, and sustainability — ensuring that DBT is not only delivered with fidelity but also with care for the therapists who provide it. She remains passionate about broadening access to evidence-based DBT and strengthening the professional community that sustains it.
