Cognitive Therapy (CT), tracing its development back in time 2,600 years to the Buddha, a type of psychotherapy first expounded by Beck in the 1960s by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck is one of the therapeutic approaches within the larger group of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT). It is fairly new to the mental health field. So is cognitive therapy to bipolar disorder. The great emphasis is place on watching - and eventually taming - one’s thoughts. There, the goal is eventual enlightenment. Here, we are speaking in relatively more modest terms of saving one’s own life - of watching how you think in certain situations, and making the appropriate adjustments.

But the goal of implication of cognitive therapy to bipolar disorder is, however, not to save one’s own life, mainly telling patient how to think in certain situations and how to make appropriate adjustments. Cognitive therapy is not a cure for bipolar disorder. Unlike traditional psychoanalysis, it does not aim at finding out the underlying causes of one’s problem but at helping the bipolar disorder patients manage to keep their thought. Nowadays, it is typically used with the combination of drug treatment, and generally involves from ten to twenty sessions. During the treatment, doctors may ask some pretty private questions to find out what is going on one the patients mind and hence try to help cheer them up or coo them down.