Marsha Linehan, who changed care for people in suicidal distress, dies at 83

Linehan, who developed dialectical behavior therapy, known as DBT, died in Seattle on November 10, 2026. She was 83. The longtime University of Washington psychologist and later professor emeritus had been hospitalized for pneumonia on October 31 before moving to end-of-life care, colleagues told the Times. That account describes her final care; it does not establish a formally certified cause of death.⁠1⁠3

Her achievement was not simply to assemble a new treatment. It was to challenge a clinical culture that too often regarded people with persistent suicidal distress and borderline personality disorder as exceptionally difficult to help. Linehan made their suffering the center of a research career, rather than a reason to turn them away.⁠1⁠2

She offered something more demanding than reassurance: a treatment built around accepting a person’s present experience while working to change harmful behavior. Neither task canceled the other. A patient’s pain could be real and deserving of care, and a different way of living could still be possible.

DBT began as a cognitive-behavioral treatment for chronically suicidal people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The condition can involve intense fears of abandonment, unstable emotions, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Linehan combined behavioral and talk-therapy approaches with Zen mindfulness practices, giving patients practical skills to tolerate distress, regulate emotions and change how they responded when those emotions became overwhelming.⁠1⁠2

The word “dialectical” names the treatment’s central tension: acceptance and change belong together. Accepting the reality of present suffering is not the same as declaring that nothing can improve. Working toward change need not mean dismissing how much a person is hurting. Linehan made the effort to hold both positions central to treatment.⁠7

Comprehensive DBT is also more than a collection of exercises. It combines individual psychotherapy, group skills training, telephone coaching and a consultation team for therapists. Coaching helps patients put skills to use beyond the therapy session; the consultation team supports the clinicians doing this demanding work. The structure matters: a worksheet or a mindfulness practice is not, by itself, the full treatment.⁠4

DBT became a leading treatment for symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Its use spread to other conditions: UW’s Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics reports evidence of effectiveness for substance dependence, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Times obituary also describes applications involving eating disorders, bipolar disorder and anxiety. Those uses should not be collapsed into a claim that every adaptation has the same evidence, that every patient benefits or that DBT is a cure. The condition, the treatment being delivered and the people receiving it matter.⁠1⁠2

Linehan’s work gave clinicians an approach to suffering that had too often defeated them. Its ambition was larger than helping someone survive a single crisis: the phrase that became the title of her memoir, Building a Life Worth Living, described a life a person could want to remain in.⁠1⁠25

Linehan knew psychological pain from the inside. Born in 1943, the third of six children, she grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where playing piano helped her express emotion. In her late teens, she experienced severe depression and suicidal distress. Her psychiatric treatment included powerful antipsychotic medication, seclusion and electroconvulsive therapy. In her memoir, she described losing the ability to play piano after that treatment—her account of what she experienced, rather than a clinical assessment of a particular lasting injury.⁠1⁠23

After another hospitalization, she turned to prayer and became deeply committed to Catholicism. She eventually left the Catholic Church, but spirituality remained important. She developed what she called “radical acceptance”: acknowledging pain as it exists in the present, without judgment. That was not a promise that pain would disappear. It was a way of meeting what was already there.⁠1⁠23

Her experience informed her work, but personal testimony was not its only foundation. Linehan pursued the training and research needed to test therapeutic approaches. She earned a psychology bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in 1968, a master’s in 1970 and a doctorate in 1971, all at Loyola University in Chicago. Postdoctoral training followed.⁠19

After work in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., she joined UW’s Department of Psychology in 1977. There she secured dozens of research grants to test approaches including mindfulness and everyday coping skills. Her biography and her science belonged to the same story, but they served different purposes: experience helped her recognize the stakes; research tested what might help other people.⁠1

In 2011, she publicly revealed her psychiatric struggle, documented in a New York Times profile published that June. Her memoir followed in 2020. The disclosure challenged the easy division between the expert who provides care and the patient who needs it. It did not, however, establish that Linehan herself had borderline personality disorder; developing a treatment for a diagnosis is not evidence of having it.⁠20⁠23⁠24

She wrote seven books, founded a DBT training organization, received distinguished fellowships and awards, and held leadership roles in professional associations. But the clearest measure of her influence was also the most human: other clinicians carried her work into their own practices and communities.⁠1

Lizz Dexter-Mazza, a former postdoctoral fellow who went on to develop a DBT-based school curriculum, was at a DBT conference in Maryland in the days after Linehan’s death. Clinicians there mourned and celebrated her together, she told the Times. “The world has lost a giant,” she said.⁠1

UW psychology chair Joseph Sisneros placed that influence beyond publications. “Marsha’s legacy extends far beyond her scholarship,” he said in a statement quoted by the Times, praising her teaching, mentorship and commitment to people experiencing profound suffering.⁠1

In a 2019 conversation with psychologist and suicide-prevention researcher Ursula Whiteside, Linehan described developing DBT to “get people out of hell”—the experience of unbearable pain, wanting to be dead and seeing no way out. Asked how she wanted to be remembered, she wanted to be someone who helped others. Her language was direct because the purpose was direct.⁠1⁠24

Linehan is survived by her daughter, Geraldine Rodriguez, a son-in-law, a granddaughter, a sister and three brothers. A private family service is expected, according to the Times; no date has been established.⁠1

She leaves a treatment and generations of clinicians trained to offer it. She also leaves a challenge to the profession: difficulty treating a person is not proof that the person is beyond help.