Michaela Swales, PhD

Michaela Swales, PhD, is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Professor in Clinical Psychology on the North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme, Bangor University. She trained in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in Seattle in 1994 / 95 with Marsha Linehan and for twenty years ran a clinical programme for suicidal young people in an inpatient service. Professor Swales is the Director of the British Isles Training Team, an International Affiliate of the Linehan Institute. She has trained more than a thousand professionals in DBT, seeding over 400 programmes, in both the UK and further afield. She co-authored, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy: Distinctive Features (2009; 2017) and Changing Behavior in DBT: Problem-Solving in Action (2015). She is the Editor of the Oxford Handbook of DBT (2019). Her primary research interest is the effective implementation of evidence-based psychological therapies in routine clinical practice. Professor Swales was a member of the Working Group on Classification of Personality Disorders, reporting to the World Health Organisation (WHO) International Advisory Group for the Revision of ICD-10 Mental and Behavioural Disorders.