Behavioral Health
Behavioral health practices focus on the ways that your thoughts and emotions influence your behavior.
“Behavioral health” is a term for a wide-reaching field that looks at mental health, lifestyle, substance use, patterns of behavior, interpersonal relationships, and more.
Behavioral professionals can help people understand their own thought processes, emotional responses, and stress reactions so that they can manage them in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways. This can help people address addictions, change habits, and be better prepared for life’s challenges.
Behavioral health therapy can help people at various life points. Sometimes, people who are handling specific situations, such as divorce or the death of a loved one, find behavioral health therapy very useful.
Behavioral therapy is also often useful for people with diagnosed mental health conditions, such as depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and anxiety.
What is the difference between mental health and behavioral health?
The terms “behavioral health” and “mental health” are sometimes used interchangeably, but they’re not exactly the same. Behavioral healthcare focuses on actions a person takes. A behavioral health assessment often includes a detailed look at a person’s mental health, but the focus and the goals of treatment are typically different from what they’d be in a mental health program.
A mental health treatment plan might primarily focus on addressing symptoms such as mood, paranoia, anxiety, lethargy, and delusion. A behavioral health treatment plan will focus on symptoms such as substance misuse, poor personal hygiene, disordered eating, difficult relationships with friends and family, or social isolation.
Who can benefit from behavioral health therapies?
Behavioral health therapy is useful in a variety of situations. Some people find behavioral health therapy helpful during challenging life moments, such as job stress, divorce, dealing with an illness, family difficulties, or after the death of a loved one.
Behavioral health therapy can also be useful for many diagnosed conditions, including:
- depression
- postpartum depression
- anxiety
- bipolar disorder
- BPD and other personality disorders
- ADHD
- trauma
- post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- substance misuse disorders
- disordered eating conditions
- anger management conditions
Behavioral Health is treated by behavioral therapy, an umbrella term for services used to treat mental disorders.
At PBCB, we provide forms of therapy that identify and help change self-destructive behaviors, improving the quality of life and relationships that have been impacted.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
This form of therapy relies on behavioral techniques to hone in on the problematic thoughts behind self-destructive behaviour.
Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)
Identifies negative thoughts and feelings that our therapists help combat by encouraging patients to replace those with positive and realistic ones.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
This derivative of CBT engages behavioral and cognitive techniques to help manage emotions and improve relationships.
Exposure Therapy
This form of counselling utilises techniques that assist in overcoming specific fears. Through this approach, the therapist will incorporate techniques in the counselling session that expose the patient to the source of their fears and encourage them to practice relaxation techniques.
Social Learning Theory
This service is focused on how people learn through observing others, which can affect how learning and behaviour change as others are rewarded or scrutinised.
Aversion Therapy
Aversion therapy is a counselling service that involves matching an aversive stimulus with a type of undesirable behaviour. This is done in the hopes that the patient gets used to the stimulus and works towards reducing negative behaviour.
While behavioral health can be tricky to treat, at PBCB, our expert therapists offer consulting practises that can target specific issues, working closely with patients to discover which method is the most effective for combatting their problem.