[sunrise]

I have been seeing the term "behavioral health" more and more frequently. What does it mean? Is it the same as "mental health"? If so, why the change in terminology? Or is the term more limited? Perhaps behavioral health would be a subset of Mental health, which is broader and includes emotional, cognitive, and behavioral functioning. ???

[serafim_etal]

Originally Posted by sunrise

I have been seeing the term "behavioral health" more and more frequently. What does it mean? Is it the same as "mental health"? If so, why the change in terminology? Or is the term more limited? Perhaps behavioral health would be a subset of Mental health, which is broader and includes emotional, cognitive, and behavioral functioning. ???

It's actually just the opposite...broader and includes Social Psychological and Sociological concepts.

[ECHOES]

sunny, I found this interesting: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...tle-conformity

[madisgram]

2009)
In psychology behavioral health, as a general concept, refers to the reciprocal relationship between human behavior, individually or socially, and the well-being of the body, mind, and spirit, whether the latter are considered individually or as an integrated whole. The term is more commonly used to describe a field of scientific study, academic proficiency and clinical healthcare practice.

[Princess_Obsidian]

Greetings,

Awesome question. I would like to know the full description/s, myself.

Have a good one.

[sunrise]

Thanks, everyone. I also found one explanation that said that the term "behavioral health" grew out of the term "behavioral medicine," which is an interdisciplinary medical and scientific discipline dealing with people's behavior, and is quite broad, as serafim said.

At the link ECHOES gave (very interesting), there was a link to another article on this question that was very thoughtful: "Behavioral Health vs. Mental Health: Does what we call it influence how people think about it?"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-mental-health
The author ponders this term and lists 3 things she likes about it and 3 things she doesn't like. When I see the term "behavioral health", I do not have a positive response to it, and I think this author put her finger on it in one of the 3 things she doesn't like about it:

"...behavioral health doesn't seem to imply that there are root causes for what we see as behavior. Within the field of suicide prevention, for example, we don't just want to prevent the behaviors that lead to suicide, but the underlying causes of those behaviors."

That was my worry too, that "behavioral" meant the focus was on behaviors instead of underlying causes. To be healed one needs to go to the root cause. In many cases, "fixing" problem behaviors isn't going to really get at the problem. (In some cases, though, I think changing the behavior can provide the solution.) I just got a negative vibe from the term, as if it seemed to imply that the healers don't really care what's causing your pain and dysfunction, they just want to fix your behavior and send you out the door. Let's apply some conditioning techniques to get you to stop banging your head against the wall, but let's not figure out why you're so miserable in the first place so that you do bang your head. If we figure out why, we have a better chance of making lasting change. Do we want people to behave well or to be healed?

Anyway, those are just some thoughts that came up for me.

I see at some universities that they offer master's degrees in Behavioral Health and that some states offer licensing to Behavioral Health practitioners (not MDs). These universities did not offer mental health counseling Master's programs, so it made me wonder if, at least in those states, Behavioral Health practitioners are replacing Mental Health Counselors/Psychotherapists. If you go see is Behavioral Health practitioner, do they offer you the same services as a Mental Health Counselor?

[pachyderm]

My impression is that "behavioral" health was a term invented because anything that smacked of "insight" was thought to be unscientific by a certain crowd; they insisted that only external behavior could be verified scientifically, and that came to mean that only external behavior had meaning at all, scientifically. They felt, and many still do, that self-observation was too unreliable to be "scientific" -- and of course it does have many potential problems. So the baby got thrown out with the bath water, since some were too afraid of examining their own uncleanliness.

The term is used now as a sort of cover for all mental or emotional problems, since it has, for now, stuck, and people use it without understanding the original restrictions that were intended to outlaw the internal life.

[NuckingFutz]

Just seems to be another catch all phrase that includes people with behavior issues as well as people with mental health issues.