Meridian DBT & Psychotherapy Services

Meridian DBT & Psychotherapy Services is a mental health counseling practice in Colchester, Vermont, providing outpatient Dialectical Behavior Therapy to individuals and groups. The practice offers individual, group, and couples therapy to Vermont residents, working from a DBT framework, and some clinicians are trained in DBT-Prolonged Exposure (DBT-PE). It also provides supervision, consultation, and training for mental health professionals, along with internship opportunities for graduate-level clinical interns and pre-licensed professionals.

Meridian DBT was founded in 2017, when three friends and coworkers left their jobs at an intensive outpatient program to build a practice that is both client-centered and therapist-centered. The founders wanted to create a workplace grounded in ethical and professional clinical and administrative practice, after watching therapists around them burn out and struggle with work satisfaction. The clinicians hold to healthy boundaries and life/work balance so that counselors and counselor trainees can sustain careers as therapists. The practice is now owned and run by Megan Dunston and Michelle Metzler, both practicing psychotherapists licensed in Vermont. Dunston is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and adjunct faculty member at the University of Vermont, who earned her master's degree there in 2007 and worked from 2006 to 2017 on the Crossroads program treatment team, providing partial hospital, intensive outpatient, and outpatient services using DBT. Her specializations include borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders, and she has led DBT workshops for staff at Matrix Health Systems, the Howard Center, and the Northeastern Family Institute. Over the years the practice has brought in collaborating practitioners, graduate-level clinical interns, pre-licensed professionals, and medication providers. Meridian's stated mission is to serve as a center for DBT learning and practice in Vermont, acting as supervisors, consultants, and mentors to providers in the DBT community. Sessions are by appointment only.

The office sits on Hegeman Avenue in Colchester's Fort Ethan Allen area, about a quarter mile from College Parkway and roughly half a mile from Pearl Street. Essex Overlook park is about 0.3 miles away, the Fort Ethan Allen Parade Grounds and Park about 0.4 miles, and the Vermont National Guard Library & Museum about 0.4 miles. Sunderland Brook runs about 0.6 miles from the office.

For Vermonters seeking structured, skills-based therapy, Meridian DBT brings together licensed DBT clinicians, ongoing training for emerging therapists, and a practice built to keep its counselors in the field for the long term.