What is Behavioral Health?
Behavioral health refers to how our emotions, behaviors, and biology relate to our physical and mental well-being. This includes our actions and responses to day-to-day events and includes the use of coping strategies to handle stressful situations. The better your behavioral health, the more positive your mental health will be.
Examples of behavioral health can range from sleeping habits, eating and drinking habits, social interactions, and physical activity.
What is Mental Health?
Mental health includes the overall emotional well-being of a person. In comparison to the situational reactions of behavioral health, mental health is the longer-lasting impact and emotional state that can lead to chronic conditions like depression and anxiety.
Mental health is expressed through emotional and physiological symptoms.
There is a spectrum that presents different mental health states, ranging from being mentally healthy to having a mental health condition.
Risk Factors
There are many behavioural factors that have a strong influence on our health and mental well-being. As individuals, we may have some control over these factors; for example, how much exercise we take, whether we smoke or drink alcohol, how we manage stress, and what we eat. Factors which we have little or no control over include age, disability, chronic disease, limited access to services and resources etc. These risk factors may further contribute to the burden of stress in a person’s life and eventually this stress may cause psychological and physiological damage.
How Behavioral Health Strategies can Help improve Mental Health
Lifestyle and behavioral strategies have been shown to positively impact mental health. Good nutrition, quality sleep, exercise, social interaction, a sense of purpose, and mindfulness are all key elements in promoting mental well-being and improving and reducing mental health conditions.
Realizing personal abilities, stressors, triggers, and coping mechanisms are important tools to identify individual risks for mental health conditions. Behavioral health strategies such as self-reporting tools can help identify mental health status and manage chronic mental health conditions. Behavioral therapies help teach self-reflection techniques to minimize unproductive or inappropriate behaviors and maximize stress-relieving behaviors. With behavior management and support, these techniques are often very effective in improving mental health conditions.
References
- Barnes, B. R. (2019). Quasi-experimental designs in Applied Behavioural Health Research. Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 84–96. https://doi.org/10.18772/22019032750.11
- Behavioral health vs mental health, mental health and behavior. Retreat Behavioral Health. (2021, August 27). Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.retreatbehavioralhealth.com/ behavioral-health-vs-mental-health/ #:~:text=It%20is%20a%20term%20 that,the%20individual’s%20 state%20of%20being.
- Blakely, T. J., & Dziadosz, G. M. (2008). The chronic care model for behavioral health care. Population Health Management, 11(6), 341–346. https://doi.org/10.1089/pop.2007.0022
- Brodey, B., Purcell, S. E., Rhea, K., Maier, P., First, M., Zweede, L., Sinisterra, M., Nunn, M. B., Austin, M.-P., & Brodey, I. S. (2018). Rapid and accurate behavioral health diagnostic screening: Initial validation study of a web-based, self-report tool (the sage-SR). Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(3). https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.9428
- Edmunds, M. (n.d.) et. al., Managing managed care: Quality Improvement in Behavioral Care. National Academies Press. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://books.google.co.il/ books?id=IdFpAgAAQBAJ&printsec= frontcover&hl=iw#v=onepage &q&f=false
- Reading, S. R. (2015). Relationship between psychosocial stress and allostatic load. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://books.google.co.il/books? id=XttvAQAACAAJ&dq=allostatic %2Bload%2Bimpacts&hl= iw&sa=X&redir_esc=y
- World Health Organization. (2016). PREVENTION AND TREATMENT. In The health and
- social effects of nonmedical cannabis use (pp. 36–39). World Health Organization. http://www.jstor.org/stable/ resrep30118.12
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC8188916/
BH-0015 RevA