Behavioral health
Encyclopedia
In psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 behavioral health, as a general concept, refers to the reciprocal
Reciprocal
-In mathematics:*Multiplicative inverse, in mathematics, the number 1/x, which multiplied by x gives the product 1, also known as a reciprocal*Reciprocal rule, a technique in calculus for calculating derivatives of reciprocal functions...

 relationship between human behavior
Human behavior
Human behavior refers to the range of behaviors exhibited by humans and which are influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics....

, 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.

Like similar terms such as mental health
Mental health
Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...

 and physical health, behavioral health is a basic English term which derives its meaning from the simple association between noun and adjective. Normal variations in the definition of such terms may be expected, given common variations seen in the component words, "behavioral" and "health". When the term is employed in the scientific or clinical sense, variations in the focus, if not the meaning of the term, have been observed.

In 1978 the term behavioral medicine
Behavioral medicine
Behavioral medicine is an interdisciplinary field of medicine concerned with the development and integration of knowledge in the biological, behavioral, psychological, and social sciences relevant to health and illness...

was formally introduced and described as

the interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of behavioral and biomedical science, knowledge and techniques relevant to health and illness and the application of this knowledge and these techniques to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.


In 1979 behavioral health emerged as that aspect of behavioral medicine

promoting a philosophy of health that stresses individual responsibility in the application of behavioral and biomedical science, knowledge and techniques to the maintenance of health and the prevention of illness and dysfunction by a variety of self-initiated individual or shared activities.


Unlike its progenitor, behavioral medicine, the emphasis of behavioral health had been placed squarely in the arena of health maintenance and the prevention of illness.
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