Stress Is a Health Issue
Stress is a normal physical and emotional response to pressure. When you experience stress, your body responds with physiological changes, including an increased heart rate, faster breathing, higher blood pressure, and muscle tension. Those responses can be useful when your body needs to respond to a threat, but stress that continues over time can contribute to or worsen health problems.
People experience stress within the context of their daily lives. So many of us have money problems, caregiving responsibilities, relationship conflict, work demands, experiences of discrimination, chronic illness, housing insecurity, and other situations that can contribute to ongoing stress. When the stress is relentless and the body has limited opportunities to rest and recover, people may experience problems with sleep, concentration, headaches, body pain, digestion, anxiety, depression, substance misuse, and other mental health issues.
Your Health Does Not Exist Outside Your Life
Healthcare often requires us to divide our experiences into categories. Physical symptoms go to one provider, behavioral health concerns go to another, and problems involving work, relationships, finances, caregiving, or discrimination may never become part of either conversation. The person experiencing all of those conditions still has one body responding to one life.
For example, someone may see a medical provider because they cannot sleep, their stomach hurts, or their blood pressure has increased significantly. Those symptoms require appropriate medical assessment because a provider should not assume stress explains a physical symptom. The provider also needs enough information about what has been happening in the person's life to understand the conditions surrounding the health concern.
However, a person’s life experiences can influence the most appropriate treatment options. A provider who understands the medical concern and the circumstances surrounding it has more information available when considering treatment options and support. The patient also has less responsibility for deciding which parts of their experience belong in which healthcare conversation. Underlying this example is information that is useful to the provider and the patient alike.
Stress Is Information
Understanding the health effects of stress does not make the person experiencing it responsible for removing conditions they may not control. Someone working two jobs cannot create more hours in the day through breathing exercises. A caregiver cannot meditate away caregiving responsibilities, and someone experiencing discrimination cannot resolve another person's behavior through self-care.
Healthcare providers need this information because social and environmental conditions can influence physical and mental health. Behavioral health professionals can contribute information about coping, relationships, behavior, life stressors, and emotional responses while medical professionals evaluate and treat physical health concerns. Integrated behavioral health brings those perspectives together as part of whole-person care.
Care for the Whole Person
Integrated behavioral health creates opportunities for medical and behavioral health professionals to work together with patients and families using a systematic approach to care. That care can address medical and behavioral health concerns alongside life stressors, health behaviors, and stress-related physical symptoms. Patients should be able to bring their health concerns forward without first having to determine whether the cause is physical, behavioral, or some combination of both.
Humans experience pressure through their bodies, relationships, environments, and the systems they depend on. Healthcare providers need enough information to understand those connections without reducing a person's health concern to stress or ignoring the pressure affecting their life. Stress is a health issue because what happens in a person's life can affect their health, and healthcare needs enough information to account for both.
Explore Integrated Behavioral Health
Indigo Path Collective approaches integrated behavioral health through the relationships people depend on, the systems through which care is delivered, and the information providers and patients need to make informed decisions. Integrated care requires medical and behavioral health professionals to understand how their work connects and where coordination can support whole-person care. Healthcare professionals and organizations interested in exploring integrated behavioral health can connect with Indigo Path Collective to continue the conversation.
Explore Integrated Behavioral Health at Indigo Path Collective
