What is it?
Behavioral health refers to how a person’s daily habits affect their mind, body, and spirit. Examples of these habits are one’s drinking and eating patterns, exercising, and addictive behavior. Good health involves engaging in actions that promote physical and mental balance. It may mean following an exercise routine religiously, eating healthily, and managing existing conditions in the body.
How is it different from mental health?
Behavioral health is an overall term that encompasses mental health. Its distinguishing factor is that it takes behavioral factors or patterns into consideration in determining physical, mental, and emotional issues affecting a person. For example, to understand how to address a person’s obesity, you need an insight into how their behaviors (which are part of physical health) lead to it.
Additionally, behavioral health is a connection between both the body and mind’s health and well-being. It is holistic in nature as it focuses on the whole body. This is opposed to mental health that specifically relates to one area of it, that is, the mind. An example is depression, which has no physical signs.
Not that behavioral health conditions are mostly affected by sociological or external factors. As for mental disorders, internal physiological or psychological factors cause them.
Who can benefit from behavioral health?
Anyone who engages in maladaptive behaviors that negatively affect their mental or physical conditions. These people exhibit behavioral health disorders as a result of a pattern of destructive behavior over time. Examples of these disorders include:
- Substance abuse
- Self-injury
- ADHD
- Addiction to sex or gambling among others
- Post-traumatic Stress (PTSD)
- Eating disorders
- Bipolar
- Social isolation
Others who require behavioral health services include those in need of psychiatric care, marriage or family counseling, chronic disease management, and prevention, intervention, or treatment of substance abuse. Both children and adults can benefit from therapy. Even individuals with depression, anxiety, anger problems, or panic disorders stand to gain from it.
Contact Washington Health Institute for care for your chronic infectious disease or for your primary care. If you have concerns with your oral health, talk to your doctor. With the proper care and management, we can help you live a long healthy life.
