Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a method for treating those people who have Bipolar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) that combines both traditional Western and non-traditional Eastern psychological concepts. The method was developed by University of Washington psychological researcher Marsha M. Linehan and she has experienced considerable success whenever implementing her plan of therapy.

Those with BPD have an extremely difficult time coping with any crises that may occur in their lives and they are also highly emotionally unstable. BPD is thus somewhat similar to Bipolar Disorder but the extremes of emotion experienced by BPD sufferers don’t usually last as long as those of manic-depressives. Linehan’s breakthrough came when she realized that BPD sufferers were all invalidated as children and that it is this self-destructive behavioral pattern that should be changed instead of the crises being removed.

A simple overview of the CBT Model: Generally an integrative multisystem model which is used by the cognitive behavioral therapists to plan the treatments and conceptualize the patients. The assessment mainly is done based on the cognitive and behavioral observations. Apart from these, the social, biological, spiritual, interpersonal and some other factors are also taken into consideration.

Levels of Cognition:

Aaron Beck and his co-workers have put forth 3 levels of Cognition which are applicable to the Cognitive Behavioral Theory. They are:

1. Full Consciousness – This is a state in which the normal decisions are made with full alertness, attentiveness and responsiveness.

2. Automatic Thoughts – They are in contrast with the above mentioned cognition. They are more independent, self governing. They are often private and run swiftly in the everyday thinking. They are not so much carefully observed or taken care of. Automatic thoughts mainly depend on the state of ones mind. If depressed, the thoughts will be low, negative and ineffective.

Positive psychology is a scientific field that focuses exclusively on the positive aspects of people and life. It covers topics like well-being, happiness, engagement, meaning, positive relationships, optimism, and so on. The premise behind the movement is that for many decades, psychology as a field had been too focused on the so-called ‘disease model’, and in treating mental illness. While this is obviously an important part of psychology (in fact, a number of mental disorders that were once though of as untreatable, can now treated), positive psychologists believe that a fulfilling life is not merely the absence of disease, but is the addition of other factors.

But just because the field is focused on the positive aspects of life, this does not mean that it dismissed the real problems that people face in their lives. It simply proposes that positive experiences also deserve to be studied, in addition, but not instead of, negative or neutral experiences.