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Marsha Linehan described the roots of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy as symbolized by the dialectics of Karl Marx, which she discovered from a connection to academia, the Buddhism she found at the Shasta Abbey Buddhist Monastery in Mount Shasta, California, and with pragmatic behavioral principles. She acknowledged that she could not call her new therapy, Marxist, Buddhist, Behavioral
Therapy because Dialectical Behavioral Therapy was much more acceptable to America psychology.

Although she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia early in her life, Linehan believed that her diagnosis should have been borderline personality disorder. Therefore, it is not surprising that Linehan would develop DBT to first successfully treat borderline personality disorders. Because of the success of DBT with borderline personality disorders, DBT is now utilized with other difficult to treat populations, with suicidal and addiction clients and is widely practiced in community mental health centers throughout the United States.