Improve Mental Health to Enhance Population Health Health care reform includes a strong focus on population health, a strategy that seeks to proactively encourage healthy behavior change across the board, including the historically underserved.

New research supports this approach, as investigators have found that poor mental health leads to unhealthy behaviors in low-income adults.

In the study, Dr. Jennifer Walsh and colleagues discovered stress and anxiety predicted subsequent health-compromising behaviors, such as smoking, binge drinking, illegal drug use, unprotected sex and unhealthy diets. And it may be that health-compromising behaviors may be used as coping mechanisms to manage the effects of stress and anxiety.

The study is published online in the Springer journal Translational Behavioral Medicine, and is part of an issue focusing on multiple health behavior change.



The researchers assessed a number of behaviors: substance use (binge drinking, smoking, illegal drug use), exercise, as well as sexual, dietary and sleep behaviors. They also measured levels of anxiety, depression and perceived stress.



In contrast, unhealthy behaviors did not predict later mental health, suggesting that unhealthy behaviors follow depression, anxiety and stress, rather than giving rise to them.

In response to these findings, study authors suggest that targeting mental health may offer a way to promote improvements across health behaviors.


Thus, referring patients for mental health counseling or stress reduction techniques may help to improve their health behaviors.

Source: Springer

Stethoscope and clipboard representing healthcare photo by shutterstock.