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OUR STORY
The Mentalizing Initiative is the first program dedicated to the delivery of mentalization based therapy on the West Coast.
It began at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006 to address a commonly found gap in training related to personality disorders for residents. Originally called the Borderline Personality Disorder Initiative, the program annually trained five resident physicians in Mentalization Based Therapy, while administering an eighteen month treatment program for those with BPD. In conjunction with the Anna Freud Centre, the BPDI hosted annual intensive trainings for practitioners in a variety of community settings. Since its inception, the BPDI and now the MI, have trained over 1000 practitioners in Mentalization Based Therapy across the world.
Over time as trainees from the program began to establish practices in the community
a core group of clinicians devoted to promoting implementation of mentalizing treatments on the West Coast developed. Recognizing a similar gap in current knowledge and effective treatments related to personality disorders existed in the community, the Mentalizing Initiative, a 501(c)3 non-profit was established in 2018. MBT was originally designed to target personality disorders, but has subsequently been shown to be effective in a variety of patient populations such as eating disorders, families, at-risk adolescents, and victims of trauma. As a non-profit organization, the Mentalizing Initiative recruits funding to provide scholarships to practitioners who work with underserved and high-risk populations, such as community mental health clinics, inner-city schools, and veterans. The mission of the MI is to increase the number of clinicians trained and available to effectively treat those suffering with difficult relationships with self and other.
The Board
Meet The Team
Advisory Board
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