Wendy Douglas, LCSW, MSPH founded Valley DBT in 2012 and has been practicing DBT for nearly 20 years. She was intensively trained in DBT at Harbor UCLA in 2006 while working at L.A. County’s Edelman Westside Mental Health Clinic as the DBT Team Leader. She completed her Advanced DBT Training under Shari Manning and Kate Comtois in 2017. She holds a Master of Social Work from UCLA and a Master of Science in Public Health from Tulane University in New Orleans, and has an undergraduate degree in theater and cross-cultural studies from Emerson College in Boston. She has lived and worked in Ghana, West Africa where she studied the public health impact of malaria on small communities. From there, she moved back to L.A. and went on to become the Manager of the Sexual Health Program at the L.A. LGBT Center for four years before getting her Masters at UCLA.  While working with the homeless and chronically ill at L.A. County Mental Health, she realized her passion for helping disenfranchised populations and those suffering the most.  Amazed at the impact that DBT had on her clients in crisis, she went on to found Idaho DBT, where she is passionate about helping those who struggle with emotion dysregulation.  Wendy is a certified Anger Management Therapist.  She has been intensively trained in Prolonged Exposure (PE) for trauma by Melanie Harned and Kate Comtois; Radically Open DBT (RODBT) by Thomas Lynch, and DBT for Families by Dr. Alec Miller. She currently sits on a National DBT Team with a number of other experienced therapists and Clinical Directors, supervised by Shari Manning, one of the original researchers who worked side by side with Marsha Linehan to set up DBT protocols at the University of Washington. She is currently working to make DBT therapy more readily available in Idaho via telehealth.

Kate is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and obtained a Master of Social Work degree from New York University in 2009. She has extensive clinical experience with people of all ages in residential treatment facilities, psychiatric hospitals, homeless shelters & schools. This influences her humanistic, strength-based & trauma-informed orientation to psychotherapy. Kate completed intensive DBT training from the Treatment Implementation Collaborative, founded by Shari Manning, an original researcher on DBT protocols under Marsha Linehan.

As a consultant for South Central LA Regional Center, Kate supports people dually diagnosed with severe mental illness, such as Schizophrenia, & developmental disabilities, such as Autism & Intellectual Disability. She specializes in supporting people & families with complex needs. Holding space for others who span a spectrum of identities, abilities, and experiences is her privilege & joy.