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Behavioral Health vs. Mental Health: A Complete Guide to the Differences

Manogna Chandrika Matta
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We are all complex creatures whose thoughts influence behavior and vice versa. This is why when we compare mental health with behavioral health, the lines can start to look a little blurry. It’s similar to the chicken and egg problem. What comes first, and what’s the subset? In this behavioral health vs. mental health article, we’ll explore the major differences like definitions, treatment methods, common conditions and more.

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Behavioral Health vs Mental Health Comparative Guide

What This Article Covers:

What Is Mental Health?

Mental health is the psychological, cognitive and emotional well-being of an individual. It has to do with how we think, emote and feel. A state where people realize their objectives, goals and potential, it also plays a crucial part in a person’s everyday life — whether they’re able to work and contribute to society.

Mental health is more than just the absence of mental illnesses and includes things like:

  • Identity
  • Perception
  • Empathy
  • Resiliency
  • Personality
  • Morality and ethics
  • Cognitive and brain function

The popular Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory lists five levels of needs — physiological, safety, community and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. Maslow argued that when individuals cannot meet these needs, it can lead to mental health issues. For example, failure to meet safety needs can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression and anxiety can occur when we can’t meet community and belonging needs.

From a neuroscience perspective, mental illnesses can arise from chemical imbalances in the brain and low serotonin and dopamine levels. According to the field of positive psychology, being in a “flow state” or being fully immersed in an activity is essential for mental well-being.

Clearly, there are many different definitions and approaches one can take to understand what mental health exactly is. With the increase of such psychoeducation, people are taking a more proactive approach and have started to consult mental health professionals to work on their well-being.

Good mental health enables people to express and manage emotions, maintain healthy intra and interpersonal relationships, and cope with change and uncertainty. On the other hand, poor mental health can lead to symptoms like sleep or appetite changes, low self-esteem and unhealthy attachment styles.

What Is Behavioral Health?

Behavioral health is concerned with how behaviors impact overall health. More specifically, it’s about how an individual’s actions affect both their mental and physical health. It has to do with aspects like:

  • Habits
  • Lifestyle
  • Coping mechanisms
  • Cultural practices
  • Social interactions

Good habits like following a proper sleep schedule, healthy diet and regular exercise go a long way in treating existing diseases effectively. Conversely, bad habits like smoking can be detrimental.

Sometimes, behavioral disorders can manifest due to an underlying issue. For example, if an individual has substance use disorder, they may have existing mental concerns that are fueling such addiction. In such cases, locating the root cause and identifying what leads to such a behavioral pattern is important.

Often, behavioral disorders can develop due to genetic, environmental, social and individual factors. To treat dysfunctional behaviors, the patient needs help tackling all preexisting factors.

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Mental Health vs. Behavioral Health

While you may see both the terms used interchangeably, mental health and behavioral health have a few differences. As discussed above, behavioral health deals with a person’s mental and physical states, whereas mental health primarily focuses on mental state.

Mental health has more to do with a person’s thoughts and feelings, whereas behavioral health is how the individual responds to those emotions. Two people can feel the same thing but react in polar opposite ways — which is what makes the fields of behavioral and mental health so interesting.

Mental health is also classified as a subset of behavioral health and falls under its larger umbrella. And while mental disorders are behavioral disorders, not all behavioral concerns are mental health conditions. Another key difference is that internal and psychological factors like emotional symptoms dominate mental illnesses, but external and sociological factors like observable behaviors dominate behavioral disorders.

In the context of behavioral health vs. mental health, it’s important to mention that both can co-occur. Often, a behavioral health condition can lead to a mental illness. Sometimes, mental health conditions like borderline personality disorder (BPD) can push individuals toward substance use to cope with overwhelming emotions. Co-occurring behavioral and mental health conditions can make it difficult to determine the root cause.

There are a lot of mental health conditions that can grow in a patient due to biological causes rather than behavioral ones. Factors such as brain chemistry and genetically transmitted disorders can play a role and are beyond the patient’s control.

These can be difficult to diagnose, especially when patients don’t show outward symptoms. However, it’s possible to see these signs in some people as well.
For example, a person with a mental health condition could have difficulty sleeping, resulting in dark circles around their eyes, reduced appetite or trouble maintaining healthy relationships.

Similarities

Behavioral health considers a person’s biological, psychological and behavioral conditions to determine the type of disorder.

While mental health doesn’t necessarily focus on treating irregular behavioral patterns, it does take into account actions as symptoms of disorders to aid in diagnosis.

Since they can co-occur and impact one another, treatment options for behavioral and mental health conditions have a lot of overlap. Treatment often comes in the form of therapy, medicine or a combination of the two.

Along with medication and therapy, medical professionals often suggest similar exercises for coping and minimizing the symptoms of certain mental health and behavioral conditions.

For example, one can improve both their mental and behavioral state to a certain extent by exercising regularly and making healthy lifestyle choices — in addition to their medical treatment.

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Common Mental Health Disorders

Some common mental health disorders are:

  • Depression: Also known as major depressive disorder or clinical depression, this condition negatively affects a person’s mood and causes a loss of interest in activities. Symptoms include decreased energy, change in appetite, difficulty sleeping, suicidal thoughts, and persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness and worthlessness.
  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): This condition causes severe, ongoing anxiety about everyday issues and leads to dysfunction by interfering with daily activities. Restlessness, fatigue, irritability, inability to concentrate or relax, trouble sleeping and trembling are some of the symptoms GAD patients can face.
  • Bipolar Disorder: This mental disorder leads a patient to have extreme mood swings and episodes of mania and depression. Manic symptoms include unusual talkativeness, an exaggerated sense of self-confidence, poor decision making and increased activity. Depressive symptoms like sadness, weight and sleep changes, and loss of interest in activities can also occur.
  • Schizophrenia: A person with schizophrenia experiences reality differently than others, affecting their ability to think and act clearly. Some symptoms include auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and disorganized thinking. According to WHO, 1 in 300 people have this mental illness.
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): PTSD is a mental illness characterized by the patient’s inability to recover after a traumatic event. This disorder can last for years, causing the patient to have physical and emotional responses like hypervigilance, trouble sleeping, angry outbursts, flashbacks, nightmares, irritability and guilt.

Common Behavioral Disorders

Some of the common behavioral health disorders are:

  • Substance Use Disorder: This condition leads to the inability to control the use of substances like drugs or alcohol. Symptoms include the inability to work, experiencing an intense urge to use the substance to block out thoughts, taking larger amounts over time, and feeling withdrawal symptoms when trying to quit.
  • Compulsive Gambling: It’s similar to a substance use disorder as both trigger the brain to provide dopamine with rewards. Also known as gambling disorder, it causes an uncontrollable urge to gamble despite its negative effects on the individual’s life.
  • Compulsive Sexual Behavior: This condition is characterized by sexual behavior, thoughts and urges that are hard to control. Sometimes referred to as hypersexuality or sexual addiction, it can cause intense sexual fantasies and distress to the patient’s life, health and relationships.
  • Eating Disorders: Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder and other eating disorders can cause serious health concerns over time. They can lead to significant damage to both the physical and mental state of an individual.

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Mental Health Treatment

Many mental conditions are treatable, and people can manage them on a day-to-day basis with the right help. Some of the treatment options for mental disorders are:

Psychotherapy or Counseling

Popularly known as “talk therapy,” this is one of the most widespread forms of treatment for mental illnesses. It involves a mental health professional and sessions where patients discuss varying topics.

Counselors provide relaxation exercises and suggest coping mechanisms based on the patient’s thoughts and habits. This therapy is done one-on-one with the patient and has several types, such as dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Prescription Medicine

Several mental illnesses react well to external medications prescribed by psychiatrists. Medicinal drugs such as antidepressants and antipsychotics help patients counter symptoms of depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

They change chemicals in the brain to act a certain way, which helps ease emotions and thoughts. Although medications won’t cure depression or other mental conditions, they can help counteract symptoms.

Individuals should only take medications prescribed by a psychiatrist. Further, it’s also essential to continue medications without missing any dosage or stopping abruptly.

Support Groups

Self-help and other community groups help patients gain valuable insights and coping techniques for their mental conditions.

Support groups aim to reduce hospitalization by building a community. Online group sessions provide support to individuals in their homes, which can be vital for those who struggle in public and social environments.

Certain groups support talking and engaging in activities together to build friendship, trust and a sense of camaraderie between individuals living with similar conditions. This helps reduce feelings of isolation, which can be prevalent in people with mental illnesses.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is an effective treatment for PTSD and complex PTSD patients that can alleviate the distress caused by traumatic memories. It involves focusing on a traumatic event while doing bilateral stimulation, i.e., moving your eyes in a specific way.

It helps reduce the vividness and intensity of emotions attached to the trauma, helping people feel desensitized to it gradually. A fairly new and non-traditional approach, EMDR has proven to be a successful treatment for people who’ve experienced military combat or sexual assault.

Ways To Improve Behavioral Health

Practice Lifestyle Changes

You can experience a positive shift in your physical and mental well-being by adopting lifestyle changes like:

  • Proper sleep schedule and sleep hygiene
  • Healthy diet
  • Exercise
  • Stress management
  • Hydration

Lack of sleep or an improper diet can often worsen existing mental and physical conditions. You can start small and work your way up to your goal. For example, if you want to sleep on time, you can dim the lights and reduce screen time at night to help you fall asleep.

Improve Interpersonal Relationships

Maintaining good interpersonal relationships is key to reducing isolation and enhancing our psychological state. It can seem like a daunting task, but you don’t have to be a social butterfly right away. You can start by:

A support system helps manage several mental and behavioral conditions like depression and substance use disorder.

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Develop Coping Mechanisms

The following coping mechanisms are effective in improving behavioral health:

Technology Improving Care

For psychologists and therapists, mental health software can help streamline tasks, enabling you to see more patients daily and focus on care delivery. It empowers you with tools that optimize patient intake and appointment scheduling, freeing up time to spend with patients.

Many mental health platforms cater to broader needs, but some may serve individual specialties. Typically, mental health software includes systems like:

Furthermore, most medical software, such as EHRs, provide broad capabilities that you can use to document and store information on patients with mental health and behavioral health disorders and their treatment.

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Next Steps

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to behavioral health vs. mental health. While they’re distinct from one another, there’s certainly quite a bit of overlap, too.

In case you feel you or someone you know has a mental or behavioral disorder, our advice is to consult a mental health professional immediately. Don’t wait to seek out help.

Looking to integrate efficient behavioral and mental health software into your practice? Take a look at our free comparison guide to get information about the major players in the market.

What insights do you have on the differences and similarities of mental and behavioral health? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.

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