“Behavioral health” is a term that may refer to underlying psychological processes such as cognition, emotion, temperament, and motivation; and to biobehavioral interactions. [1] This term is sometimes used interchangeably with and often refers to “mental health.”
Like similar terms such as “mental health” 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.