In 2021, brain conditions caused more disability-adjusted life-years (406 million DALYs) than other widely-acknowledged health threats such as cancer (260 million DALYs) or cardiovascular disease (402 million DALYs). Those numbers will increase as populations continue to grow and age, challenging families, employers, and health systems to respond.
What is brain health?
The brain plays a role in everything we do: our thinking and feeling; our speaking and movement; our breathing, heart function, and our immune system. If our brain is affected by disease or injury, it can damage our lives and the lives of those around us.
Brain health encompasses mental health conditions, neurological disorders, and cerebrovascular diseases. Dementia, stroke, and depression are all conditions of the brain that rank among the top causes of death and disability globally.
Researchers have been working to understand these conditions for a long time, but for too long, they have been examined individually — not as a collection of disorders that can be traced back to the brain.