Depression Grand Challenge

More than 50 leading mental health and computer science researchers, industry experts, advocates and funders from six countries came together at UCLA Feb. 28 – Mar. 2, 2023 to collaborate on a shared vision and common goals for digital sensing technologies in mental health research.

The Depression Grand Challenge team served as host of the second semi-annual meeting of researchers involved with the MCPsych program funded by Wellcome Leap from Nov. 3-4, 2022.

On May 16, 2022, Vice Chancellor Monroe Gorden and CAPS Director Nicole Green announced the opening of the Stress and Resilience or “STAR” Program.

After successfully completing two pilot studies, today is the launch of the final or main study phase of the Digital Mental Health Study, involving more than 3,000 participants recruited from UCLA Health and the UCLA student body.

UCLA has launched the UCLA Depression Research Registry, a new tool to improve research recruitment for future UCLA mental health research studies.

The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge was one of twelve organizations selected as a performer for the Wellcome-Leap Multi-Channel Psych program. The program aims to develop better understanding about anhedonic depression, a severe and inhibitive kind of depression which affects the ability to feel pleasure or enjoyment.

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.

Today is the launch of the second pilot phase of the study, involving approximately 140 participants recruited from UCLA Health. As with the prior pilot phase, this phase will be conducted entirely remotely.

After building content, a new platform, training a new cohort of coaches on the content and collaborating closely with students and administrators at East Los Angeles College, staff at Didi Hirsch and staff at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge is excited to launch the STAND at ELAC program for ELAC students.

The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge has begun a pilot research project in collaboration with Apple, called the Digital Mental Health Study. The study seeks to develop more objective measures for detecting depression and anxiety.