Behavioral Health HOSA 2026 - copy

SAMHSA

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

What is SAMHSA?

An agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that leads public health efforts to advance the behavioral health of the nation.

What do they offer?

Help and support for people seeking mental and substance use disorders, including services like FindTreatment.gov and the 988 suicide and crisis hotline.

How do they educate people?

Through a dedicated website that provides access to communities, technical support, and a free internet library.

National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

Estimates to allow researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and the general public to better understand and improve the nation's behavioral health.

Alcohol

Drinking too much can harm health; there is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant.

Signs of drinking too much

Drinking for longer than intended, trying to cut drinking but cannot, continuing to drink after side effects.

Policies to reduce alcohol misuse

Regulating alcohol outlets, minimum legal purchase age, limiting sale hours, increasing alcohol taxes.

Marijuana and CBD

Marijuana comes with health risks; CBD is a compound found in marijuana that does not cause a high and is not FDA approved.

Opioids

Prescription drug misuse occurs when someone takes a medication the wrong way, and opioid overdose can be life-threatening.

Common prescriptions that are misused

Pain relievers, stimulants, and sedatives.

Naloxone

A medication that can reverse an opioid overdose.

Tobacco & Vaping

Aerosol can contain nicotine, cancer-causing chemicals, heavy metals, flavorings, VOCs, and ultra-fine particles.

Smoking

The leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

Effects of quitting vaping

Heart rate drops, nicotine levels in blood drop to zero in 24 hours, carbon monoxide levels drop to normal in several days.

Stimulants

Methamphetamine is a synthetic stimulant that is addictive and can cause considerable health adversities.

Short-term effects of meth

Increased blood pressure, body temperature, faster breathing, loss of appetite, disturbed sleep patterns, erratic behavior.

Long-term effects of meth use

Permanent damage to the heart and brain, anxiety, confusion, insomnia, itching, and dental problems.

Risk of Using Drugs

All drug use comes with risks, including marijuana, cocaine, meth, and prescription drug misuse.

Cocaine

Highly addictive and involved in nearly one in five overdose deaths.

Substance Use Prevention

SAMHSA envisions a future where individuals, families, and communities are healthy and thriving through data and strategic program investments.

Substance Use Disorder Treatment

SAMHSA offers training and guidance to improve the ability to provide evidence-based treatments.

Recovery

A process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential.

What is Substance Use Disorder?

A chronic disease where people compulsively seek and use drugs despite harmful consequences.

Addiction

A complex disease that alters the brain, making it hard to quit even for those who want to stop.

What is Mental Health?

Includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being; affects how we think, feel, and act.

Mental Health Conditions

Disorders that affect a person's thinking, mood, and behavior, ranging from mild to severe.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

A mental health condition characterized by a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others.

Anxiety Disorder

Occasional anxiety is expected; feeling anxious when faced with problems.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Usually involves a constant feeling of anxiety or fear.

Panic Disorder

Characterized by frequent and unexpected panic attacks.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Involves repeated upsetting thoughts or obsessions.

Social Anxiety Disorder

An overwhelming ongoing fear of being watched and judged by others.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Exhibited by inability to focus, being overactive, or inability to control behavior.

Bipolar Disorder

A serious mental illness that causes unusual shifts in mood, ranging from extreme highs to lows.

Borderline Personality Disorder

A mental health condition characterized by long-term patterns of unstable or explosive emotions.

Depression

A disorder of the brain.

Eating Disorders

Mental health conditions that involve extreme mental preoccupation, disturbing emotions, attitudes, and behaviors involving weight and food.

Post-Traumatic Disorder

PTSD is a disorder that develops when a person has experienced or witnessed a scary, shocking, terrifying, or dangerous event.

Schizophrenia

Involves delusion, hallucinations, unusual physical behavior, and disorganized thinking.

Trauma

SAMHSA describes individual trauma as an event or circumstance resulting in physical harm, emotional harm, and or life threatening harm.

ReCAST

The purpose of the program is to assist high risk youth and families and promote resilience and equity in communities that have recently faced civil unrest.

Suicide

Suicide is complex and determined by multiple combinations of factors such as mental illness, substance misuse, chronic illness, trauma, painful losses, exposure to violence, and social isolation.

Disaster Behavioral Health

DBH is the understanding and provision of mental, emotional, and substance use services and interventions for persons and communities impacted by disasters.

Psychology

Combination of Greek works psyche and logos. The study of the mind.

Introspection

Personal observation of your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Wilhelm Wundt

First psychologist who conducted the first documented psychology experiment in his laboratory.

Structuralism

The mind can be broken down into the smallest elements of mental experience.

Gestalt Psychology

Breaking a whole perception into its building blocks, as advocated by the structuralists, would result in the loss of some important psychological information.

Functionalism

Views behavior as purposeful since it led to survival.

Behaviorism

Concentrates on observable measurable behaviors.

Abraham Maslow

Asked questions about what made a person good. He introduced a major theory of motivation and Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Biological Psychology

Also called behavioral neuroscience, it focuses on the relationships between mind and behavior and their underlying biological processes including genetics, biochemistry, anatomy and physiology.

Evolutionary Psychology

Attempts to answer the question of how our physical structure and behavior have been shaped by evolution.

Cognitive Psychology

Focuses on the process of thinking or the processing of information.

Social Psychology

Describes how the social environments including culture affect the behavior of individuals.

Developmental Psychology

Explores how the normal changes in behavior that occur across the lifespan.

Clinical Psychology

Seeks to explain, define and treat abnormal behaviors.

Objectivity

Conclusions are based on facts, without the influence from personal emotions or biases.

Descriptive methods

Include case studies, naturalistic observations and surveys.

Operationalization

The process of translating abstract independent and dependent variables into concrete forms.

Cross-sectional Study

An experimental design for assessing age-related changes in which data are obtained simultaneously from people of differing ages.

Longitudinal Study

Experiment design for assessing age related changes in which data is obtained from the same individuals over a long time period.

IACUCs

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees.

Nature

The conditions of heredity to our physical structure and behaviors.

Nurture

The contributions of environmental factors and experience to our physical structure and behaviors.

Genotype

Individuals profile of alleles.

Phenotype

Observable characteristics.

Gene

Small segments of DNA located in a particular place on a chromosome.

Gene Expression

Process in which genetic instructions are converted into a feature of a living cell.

Relatedness

The probability that two people share the same allele from a common ancestor.

Behavioral Genetics

The scientific field that attempts to identify and understand links between genetics and behavior.

Heritability

The statistical likelihood that variations observed in a population are due to genetics.

Reciprocal Altruism

Help you provide another person when you expect the person to return the favor in the future.

Action potential

The electrical signal arising in a neuron's axon.

Resting potential

The measure of the electrical charge across a neural membrane when the neuron is not processing information.

Transduction

The translation of incoming sensory information into neural signals.

Bottom-up processing

Perception based on building simple input into more complex perceptions.

Top-down processing

A perceptual process in which memory and other cognitive processes are required for interpreting incoming sensory information.

Psychophysics

The study of relationships between the physical qualities of stimuli and the subjective responses they produce.

Absolute threshold

The smallest amount of stimulus that can be detected.

Difference threshold

The smallest detectable difference between two stimuli.

Trichomacy Theory

A theory of color vision based on the existence of different types of cones for the detection of short, medium and long wavelengths.

Opponent Process theory

A theory of color vision that suggests we have a red green color channel and a blue yellow color channel in which the activation of one color in each pair inhibits the other.

Feature detector

A hypothetical cell that responds to only one specific visual stimulus.

Gate theory

The theory that suggests that input from touch fibers competes with input from pain receptors, possibly preventing pain messages from reaching the brain.

Beta Wave

Waveform that indicates alert wakefulness.

Alpha Wave

Indicates relaxed wakefulness.

Theta Wave

A waveform that is characteristic of lighter stages of N-REM sleep.

Delta Wave

Waveform recorded that indicates very deep N-REM sleep.

Drive Reduction

The states of relief and reward produced by removing the tension and arousal of the drive state.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Description of the relationship between task complexity, arousal, and performance.

Display Rule

A cultural norm that specifies when, where, and how a person should express an emotion.

James-Lange Theory

Theory of emotion that proposes that physical sensations lead to subjective feelings.

Catharsis

Theory of emotion that views emotion as a reservoir that fills up and spills over; predicts that expressing an emotion will reduce arousal.

Cannon-Bard Theory

Theory of emotion featuring the simultaneous and independent occurrence of physical sensations and subjective feelings during an emotional experience.

Schachter-Singer two-factor theory

A theory of emotion in which general arousal leads to assessment, which in turn leads to subjective feelings.

Somatovisceral Afference Model of Emotion (SAME)

A model of emotion in which a range of physical sensations from precise to general requires varying degrees of cognitive processing prior to subjective feelings.

Associative Learning

The formation of associations or connections among stimuli and behaviors.

Classical Conditioning

Type of learning in which associations are formed between two stimuli that occur sequentially in line.