About the Scholarship

The DBT-Linehan Board of Certification™ is pleased to announce the availability of The Michael Chambers Memorial Scholarship Fund (MCMS). This fund was initiated to increase client access to the number of DBT-LBC, Certified Programs™ to help address financial barriers which could interfere with prospective programs becoming DBT-LBC™ certified.  We are inviting you to apply! Please review the following eligibility criteria to determine if your program may be eligible. 

Apply Now: The DBT-LBC™ Program Certification Scholarship Workgroup reviews the scholarships that are submitted and the approved scholarships are awarded from the MCMS Fund. Applications for scholarships can be submitted and approval notification granted prior to paying the application fee.  Certified Team Leads may log into their MyAccount and begin an application for Program Certification.  This makes the Scholarship Application itself available on their account page once this step is taken.   Please note however, if a scholarship is approved, the certification application must be completed and the accompanying fee must be submitted within six months of the date on the letter of approval.  Those funds will then be earmarked for your Program.  This allows your program to budget funds for certification in a predictable way before starting the process.  

Who Should Apply

Your DBT Program is eligible to apply for a Program Certification scholarship if you meet one or more of the following criteria:

    1. Provide treatment to complicated, multi-diagnostic, high risk clients;
    2. Provide treatment to clients who have been fired by another provider;
    3. A portion of clients treated are either covered by Medicaid or Medicare, are seen on a pro bono basis or sliding scale and/or are inadequately insured;
    4. Clients seen are predominantly from minority populations, including the LGBTQ population;
    5. Treatment is provided to veterans or families of active service men and women, especially when delays in treatment at a VA facility occurs or is unavailable due to distance to a VA clinic with a DBT program;
    6. Clinics who provide DBT services to children and adolescents where sessions offered to family members may not be adequately covered by insurance, but needed;
    7. Clinics who provide training to graduate students, interns or post docs;
    8. Clinics devoted to data gathering for research purposes where such time is not compensated by grant funding;
    9. Clinics providing consultation to schools and/or agencies on a low or no fee basis;
    10. Clinics who agree in advance to provide at least one volunteer to serve as a Program Certification Reviewer for a minimum of two additional DBT Program applicants. This volunteer must be a DBT Certified clinician by DBT-LBC™ .

To be considered for a DBT Program Certification scholarship, a DBT Program’s certified Team Leader will open a Program Certification application in their My Account on-line profile. Once the application is begun, there will be an additional tab for the MCMS application to be completed also. 

The eligible awardees receive a $2000 scholarship towards the Program Certification fees and it is to cover the final step-the Site Visit. Programs must pay the Application fee, Desktop Review fees and travel expenses (for any in-person site reviews) for the Reviewers themselves. At this time, site reviews are completed virtually; therefore there is no additional fee for travel expenses. 

To get a good understanding of what is required in Program Certification and its application, please see the Application Self-Assessment. 

We encourage DBT Programs to become certified and hope that the availability of scholarship assistance helps interested programs be able to pursue this valuable certification. Please check out the website for more information and feel free to Contact Us via the website with any questions. 

Scholarship Form

Access to the scholarship form will be available via the Team Leader’s on-line My Account Program Application.  There you will have access to download the form. Once your form is completed, please upload it via the Contact Us link on the website. You can view the form for informational purposes only Here.