Behavioural Health Consultants

A Behavioural Health Consultant (BHC) works with you and your health care team to support you if you are experiencing mental health problems, life stresses, motivational issues or other health concerns. A BHC is a nurse with special training in the behavioural management of health issues through brief interventions. Together, the BHC and your doctor can consider the mind-body-behaviour connection and help you determine a course of action that will work best for you.

BHCs can help you develop skills to effectively manage emotional or behavioural difficulties such as:

• • depression
  • anxiety
  • stress
  • anger
  • family/relationship problems
  • bereavement

They can help you develop behaviour-change plans to:

• • quit smoking
  • manage alcohol use
  • be more active
  • make other lifestyle changes

BHCs can also help you reduce symptoms associated with various chronic medical conditions or help you cope better with these conditions. A few of these are:

• • headaches
  • sleep
  • high blood pressure
  • diabetes
  • irritable bowel syndrome
  • asthma
  • obesity
  • chronic pain

Your Appointment with a BHC

You can expect the BHC to ask you specific questions about your physical symptoms, any emotional concerns you are experiencing, your behaviours, and how all of these might be related.

Appointments are generally no longer than 30 minutes. The BHC will provide a brief, solution-focused assessment and treatment. You can also expect the BHC to have a close working relationship with your family physician.

Remember: you and your family physician remain in charge of your health care – the BHC’s primary job is to help you and your family physician develop and implement the best integrated health care plan for YOU!

BHCs and Specialized Mental Health Care

The services provided by the BHC are part of the primary health care you receive from your family doctor, and are not specialty mental health care. This means:

• Documentation of your assessment and recommendations from the BHC will be written in your medical record with your family physician. A separate mental health record will not be kept by the BHC or the Primary Care Network.
• Communications with your BHC may not be entirely confidential. Your BHC will make every effort to protect your privacy but, like all providers, they must report information from any current patient that could have a negative impact on our mission.
• The BHC will not provide traditional psychotherapy. If you request, or the BHC thinks you would benefit from specialty mental health services, the BHC will recommend that you and your family physician consider specialty mental health services

For more information or referral, please ask your family physician.

Health Resources

Our BHCs have compiled a selection of useful websites and information.