Depression Grand Challenge

The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health awarded the Depression Grand Challenge another year of funding as part of the DMH+UCLA Public Partnership for Wellbeing.

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

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 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.

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.

An overview of the STAND Coach Program, a component of the STAND system of care, was published in the journal JMIR Mental Health. The papers' authors present the STAND Coach Program as a solution to the “tension between the scalability and fidelity” of mental health services, particularly services that rely on professionals like coaches to support the delivery of treatment modules.

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 recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, UCLA teamed up with Beyoncé’s BeyGOOD to open the STAND for All program to everyone. Through STAND for All, UCLA offers free self-guided online lessons to teach participants cognitive behavioral skills for self-management of low mood and anxiety.

Jonathan Flint, UCLA behavioral geneticist and Depression Grand Challenge Executive Committee member, shared background about the theory of the “warrior gene” in a blog post written for the Oxford University Press.