Well-being Therapy in Depressive Disorders

A specific brief psychotherapeutic intervention aimed at empowering psychological well-being, the so-called Well-Being Therapy (WBT), has been manualized in 2016 by Giovanni Fava and has shown to be effective in randomized controlled trials. WBT is based on the multidimensional model of psychological well-being developed by Marie Jahoda which encompasses environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, autonomy, self-acceptance, positive relations with others, and balance of psychic forces. WBT aims at promoting the achievement of an optimal-balanced functioning between the dimensions of psychological well-being, and such a balance is subsumed under the rubric of euthymia. There are evidences that WBT may be a suited clinical approach for second- or third-line treatment of depressive disorders with particular reference to decreasing vulnerability to relapse and modulating psychological well-being and mood. It has been also proposed a role of WBT in depressive disorders in clinical conditions such as treatment resistance, loss of antidepressant clinical efficacy, persistent post-withdrawal disorders, trauma exposure, and medical disease comorbidity. The present chapter provides an overview of the possible applications of WBT as treatment of depressive disorders.