Wild Water Mental Health

What's the difference between behavioral health and mental health?   

I've often discussed this with colleagues.  Mental health professionals have struggled for well over a century to define and understand human behavior and mental illness--and what it means to have mental wellness.  Safe, effective treatment for medical disorders increased exponentially in the 19th and 20th centuries, but advances in mental health care have been more elusive because there are no simple diagnostic tests that can tell us what's going on.  Advances in brain imaging, understanding brain chemistry, and expanding research into the influence of genetics and evolution give us a window through which we can try to map human behavior and mental illness and wellness, but these advances have yet to fully explain the complexities of the human brain and our behavior.  Everything we do is because of our brain.

Here's what I want people to understand: not all undesirable human behavior is due to mental illness; in fact, most of it is not.  There are eight billion of us living on this planet.  Everyone has their own personality, culture, life experiences, values, beliefs, habits, and adversity.  The potential for normal behavioral oddities is infinite!

That being said, I don't agree with referring to mental health care as "behavioral health" although I do acknowledge reputable mental health professionals around the world use those words to describe what we treat. 

Being sad is normal.  Being happy is normal.  Getting angry is normal.  Being or acting weird doesn't equal mental illness.  Quirky appearance doesn't equal mental illness.  Talking to yourself doesn't equal mental illness.  Being in a good mood or a bad mood does not equal mental illness.  Being an asshole doesn't equal mental illness.  Having a meantal illness isn't abnormal.  Even being violent doesn't equal mental illness.  Google "mental illness and violence" and you'll discover thousands of professional articles debunking the myth that all violence is due to mental illness, and all mentally ill people are prone to violence.  We MUST stop this mischaracterization because of the damage it does and the stigma it causes.  

Using the term "behavior" indicates the willful ability to control and alter your activities and communication consistent with the circumstances.  People who have a mental illness often temporarily or permanently lose that otherwise innate ability to regulate their emotions and perception; this is why compliance with treatment, ie, medication and therapy, is so important.  If they are in treatment they can regain much of that control, although it may never be 100% of the time.  Acute and chronic mental illness clouds thinking, saps energy, causes despair or euphoria for no apparent reason, and in psychotic illnesses causes patients/clients to see, hear, feel, smell, and even taste things that aren't real.  This doesn't mean people who have a mental illness have an excuse and justification for inappropriate conduct or worse yet, violent behavior, but it can explain the cause.

Mental illness is a challenge for the patient/client, and also the professionals trying to understand and treat the illnesses.  It's a challenge for loved ones to understand and be supportive.  People don't choose to have a mental illness.  They may exhibit behavior that is unusual and sometimes frightening, but how they "behave" is a very small piece of the puzzle.    

Our brains are fascinating, a miracle of evolution and nature.  Research in recent decades has greatly expanded what we know about the neurological and genetic components of mental illness, but there is still so much more to learn about how the human brain function--and malfunctions.