Positive psychology

For long psychology remained confined to the disease model. The intention of this approach was to classify and recognize the various mental disorders and help to cure them. It attempted to make the lives of miserable people a little bit less miserable. Through decades of research, this approach had various achievements:
a) In developing classification for various mental disorders
b) In researching for the causes for the mental disorders. For e.g schizophrenia has now causative factors in genes, upbringing etc.
c) In developing cures and treatments for the various disorders.

Though these successes can be claimed, one of the important drawbacks of this approach was that the focus of psychology was changed to repair and treatment and not prevention and interventions, It did not focus much on creating conditions for healthy development of normal people and make their lives more satisfying and full.

The positive psychology movement thus has three major focus areas:
a) concerned with strength as with weakness
b) interested in building the best things in life as in repairing the worst
c) concerned with making the lives of normal people as fulfilling and nurturing high talent as with healing pathology