In a recent Fortune article, The End of Aging, Aubrey de Grey boldly predicts that life spans will increase dramatically in the coming years. Needless to say, his thoughts have created quite a bit of conversation (see the 100 comments logged on Randall Parker's de Grey post).

So what if Aubrey is right?

As people live physically longer and healthier lives, mental health will become the preeminent social and political issue of our time. Living longer physically does not mean living in better mental health. Mental health is the springboard of thinking, communication skills, learning, emotional growth, resilience, and self-esteem.

With longer life spans, the potential for mental illness follows. For example, dementia, the loss of function in multiple cognitive domains, increases with age. The largest number of persons with dementia occurs in people in their early eighties. As the number of people living over 80 years explodes to over 20% of the US population by 2040, dementia will take over as the leading cause of disability. That is, if appropriate tools for stemming cognitive decline, cogniceuticals, don't materialize.

Today, five of the ten leading causes of disability worldwide (major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, alcohol use and obsessive compulsive disorders) are mental illnesses. A recent report titled, Prevalence, Severity, and Unmet Need for Treatment of Mental Disorders in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys shows that they are relevant in poor countries as they are in rich ones, and all predictions point to a dramatic increase in mental illness.

Neurotechnology will play the leading role in defining, diagnosing and treating mental health problems in the coming years as concerns about life expectancy turn towards the issues related to mental health expectancy.

Update: A nice fact I learned from Bobbi Low at Gruter: life spans of different organisms across the planet range from 5 minutes to 300 years.

Update 8/16/04: "Earth's oldest living thing is a bristlecone pine in California that's been around for an estimated 4,7000 years" (Deborah Gangloff, Executive Director of the American Forests journal). Thanks Brandon.