These shocks are placing tremendous pressure on our brain capital, encompassing our brain health and brain skills.2 During the pandemic, brain health declined, with rising rates of emotional disturbances in children, spikes in youth suicide, increases in mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression across the population, and the emergence of long COVID.3 Shocks put out brain skills to the test and required tremendous resilience and adaptability. Indirectly, the physical environment may influence mental health by altering psychosocial processes with known mental health sequelae. Equitable Brain Health Clinical Care for Healthy CommunitiesWe cannot begin to solve some of our greatest societal issues—homelessness, incarceration, deaths of despair—without focusing on care for individuals with brain health disorders. The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-203014 lays out a range of approaches to achieving mental health equity. The concept of “green brain capital” places a central emphasis on the brain to deliver a healthy and sustainable environment, and vice versa, on a green environment to promote and safeguard brain health.19 The environmental determinants of brain health are foundational to this model, as brain health is key to navigating and thriving in the modern world.

Source: New York Times April 11, 2023 12:46 UTC