Depression Grand Challenge

Preliminary findings from the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge’s Digital Mental Health Study were featured in a May 2, 2024, Time publication focused on the 2024 TIME100 Most Influential People in Health.

 Wellcome, a global charitable organization that funds discovery research, issued a request for proposals to extend the work of the digital sensing workshop, hosted at UCLA and co-sponsored by Wellcome and the National Institute of Mental Health in March 2023.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block announced he plans to step down from the helm of UCLA at the end of this school year, a post he has held for 17 years. Block, a neurobiologist, was particularly invested in the DGC to understand and better treat depression.

Timed with the end of her first year in the role, the UCLA Newsroom reported on DGC Co-Director Michelle Craske’s activities as the inaugural Kevin Love Fund Centennial Chair.

The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge STAND for All program has been featured by the Mental Health Coalition as a top resource for college students in its inaugural College Student Mental Health Toolkit. The MHC designed and launched the toolkit for the start of the 2023 school year to equip college students with reliable resources, services and support needed to thrive as they transition into adult life.

During Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week, Apple cited UCLA Depression Grand Challenge mental health research findings and expertise in demonstrating the importance of caring for your mental health.

In a recent article authored for the April 2022 issue of UCLA Magazine, Chancellor Gene Block spoke to his concern about a “shadow pandemic” of worsened mental health across societies in the two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article shared the “five C’s” for managing COVID-19 anxiety, as well as COVID-19–related insights from UCLA Depression Grand Challenge Co-Director Michelle Craske (psychology and psychiatry).

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.

An op-ed from the Daily Bruin — a the student-run newspaper at UCLA – focused on the need for more graduate student mental health resources and drew attention to the Depression Grand Challenge.