Depression Grand Challenge

The Depression Grand Challenge is part of a project investigating the effects of CBT using STAND content to improve the effectiveness of depression treatment. The project, a large-scale factorial trial, seeks to measure how changes in STAND content may affect the intervention’s effectiveness for repetitive negative thinking.

Beginning today, ELAC students who sign up for the STAND at ELAC program have the option of enrolling in the STAND at ELAC research studies and earning up to $275 for their participation.

The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge was awarded a five-year, $12 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to expand its STAND system of care, with a focus on reaching more California community college students.

In an effort to understand more about depression experienced by pregnant and new moms, we are recruiting women who receive care at a UCLA OBGYN clinic and who are between week 28 of their pregnancy and 6 months postpartum.

In 2019, after collecting a great deal of feedback about and experience with the initial implementation of the STAND system of care with the UCLA student body, the DGC secured funding from our generous donors to reimagine the way we would deliver cognitive behavioral strategies to participants leveraging technology. Funding was designated for both the delivery mechanism, which we refer to as the STAND platform, and for the content.

Discover Magazine’s Nov. 2019 issue highlighted the Depression Grand Challenge’s efforts to understand the genetic and environmental causes of depression, and mentioned the STAND system of care.

UCLA was among the campuses cited for its recognition of the need to deliver better and faster services to campus communities with the Depression Grand Challenge’s Screening and Treatment for Anxiety and Depression system of care.

The funds will enable the DGC to upgrade the STAND Program (dubbed STAND 2.0), including an enhanced digital treatment platform and the creation of new algorithms and back-end tools.

The 100K study is one of the four components of the Depression Grand Challenge and it offers the promise to reveal the underlying genetic, cognitive, social and environmental causes of depression.