The launch of the Nature Medicine Commission on Brain Health for Economic Resilience is a welcome development. The growing recognition that brain health matters to individuals, communities, societies, and economies is long overdue. For too long, brain health has been treated primarily as a healthcare issue rather than as a foundational element of human flourishing and societal wellbeing. The Commission’s ambition to better understand the relationship between brain health, resilience, and economic outcomes has the potential to drive meaningful change. (Nature)
However, as discussions within the Institute of Neurodiversity (ION) community have highlighted, there is also an important question that must remain at the centre of this work:
How do we ensure that human value is not reduced to economic value?
The language of economic resilience, productivity, workforce participation, and independence can be powerful in influencing governments and policymakers. Economic arguments often open doors that moral arguments alone cannot.
Yet there is a risk that the measures we choose become the values we pursue.
If brain health is assessed primarily through the lens of economic contribution, then those who are unable to work, who require support, who communicate differently, or who live outside conventional definitions of productivity may inadvertently be viewed as having less value. History reminds us that societies have often made this mistake.
Human worth does not arise from productivity, independence or economic contribution. Human worth arises from our shared humanity.
This is particularly relevant for neurominorities, disabled people, older adults, carers, and many others whose lives may not fit neatly into traditional economic models. Their contribution to society cannot always be captured through measures of GDP, labour participation, or productivity statistics.
The conversation therefore needs to move beyond independence towards interdependence.
No human being is truly independent. Every one of us depends on others throughout our lives. We rely on families, friends, communities, healthcare systems, education systems, infrastructure, and social support. Interdependence is not a weakness within society; it is one of its defining strengths.
The Institute of Neurodiversity ION community’s response of “Nothing about us, without us” is therefore especially important. People whose lives are being measured, researched, or affected by policy decisions must have a meaningful voice in shaping those decisions. Lived experience should not be treated as a consultation exercise after the framework has been designed. It should be embedded from the outset.
This is not merely an ethical consideration; it is also a practical one. Measures designed without community input often fail to capture what truly matters to the people they seek to serve.
The Commission’s focus on brain health and brain capital reflects a growing recognition that cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities are central to societal resilience. (Global Brain Economy Initiative) Yet resilience itself should not be understood purely as economic resilience. Communities are resilient because they foster belonging, connection, purpose, dignity, care, creativity, and mutual support. These qualities have economic implications, but they are valuable regardless of their economic return.
As artificial intelligence, demographic change, and global economic transitions reshape our societies, there is an opportunity to build a more human-centred understanding of value. One that recognises that economic prosperity is important, but that economies exist to serve people, not the other way around.
The ultimate question is not how much value human beings contribute to the economy, it is whether our economies, institutions, and communities create the conditions for human beings of all kind to flourish.
If the Nature Medicine Commission helps us move closer to that goal, it will have made an important contribution. If it listens closely to the voices of those whose lives are most affected by these discussions, it may also help ensure that brain health is understood not simply as an economic asset, but as a fundamental component of human dignity, wellbeing, and possibility.