Experts: Brain health needs bold investments, not just sympathizers

Experts called on world leaders at this week’s United Nations General Assembly to pay more attention to brain health, which they say doesn’t receive much attention and funding. Although the brain serves as a command center for people’s thoughts, emotions, movements, and information, there’s a whole range of conditions and diseases that affect the complex organ, including autism, depression, anxiety, as well as neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and dementia. Mental health conditions alone affect over 1 billion people globally, according to the most recent findings by the World Health Organization. Yet the U.N. agency finds governments on average spend just around 2% of their budgets on mental health services, unchanged since 2017. Mental health is finally getting recognized for the first time this week at a U.N. high-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases. But for the longest time, mental health, and more broadly, brain health, has been neglected in the NCD discussions, according to some experts. “The [noncommunicable disease] conversation has always been around other diseases and has never included the brain really,” George Vradenburg, chair of the Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative, said during a Devex panel session on the sidelines of UNGA. “So I’d say, hey, head of state, wake up. Examine the facts. Examine the cost of not doing anything, and the opportunity of major investment in this space,” he added. He said 22 nations now have plans in place to keep brains healthy, and other governments in Europe are considering a similar process as their working-age population declines. But it’s not just governments: every sector, including businesses, academics, and patient groups, must foster brain health. “The brain that you’re born with is the same brain you die with, and you better both take care of it and foster its growth during the course of life,” Vradenburg said. Pamela Collins, chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said there are tools that can be — and have been — adapted in different contexts to treat common mental disorders, based on years of research. But what’s needed is sustained investments, particularly in implementing them. “A large proportion of your population will be affected by at least one of these conditions. They may have them, or they will certainly have family members that are affected by them,” she said. Heads of state must talk to their finance ministers in addition to their health ministers to address the issue. And action is needed beyond acknowledging the problem exists, according to experts. “This is the time when mental health needs not just sympathizers, but people who are willing to take bold action and invest in brain health and support community systems that deliver it,” said Vincent Mujune, country director for the NGO StrongMinds in Uganda that provides community-based mental health services in low-resource communities in parts of Africa.