Hope is Real

UCLA Depression Grand Challenge

Student Treatment Initiative

Providing Depression Screenings and Treatments for UCLA Students

UCLA is leading a national conversation and effort with the Depression Grand Challenge. As part of this endeavor, UCLA is offering alternative screenings and treatments for college students suffering from or at risk for depression. You can help.

The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge (DGC) brings together faculty, students, and supporters from multiple disciplines to collaborate on a holistic approach to understand, prevent, and treat depression – a major issue on college campuses and the world’s biggest health problem. Key to this effort is an initiative launched in September 2017 to screen more than 10,000 UCLA students, provide them individualized feedback, and route them to treatment resources – all at no cost to the students.

State-of-the-art tracking of daily activity, such as sleep, will help identify early warning signs for an immediate intervention to direct students to treatment, eliminating the lapses that often occur between recognizing a patient’s needs and providing professional help. UCLA students don’t pay, but this critical effort is costly. That’s where you come in. Your gift can make a difference – even save lives – by helping a Bruin receive depression screening, appropriate treatments, and continued monitoring. 

By contributing to this campaign, you and UCLA can help UCLA students, one student at a time. 

Gifts of all sizes can help UCLA save lives. Please make a donation today.      

BRINGING HOPE

The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge (DGC) aims to cut the burden of depression – which affects 300 million people worldwide – in half by 2050 and eliminate it by the end of the century. This ambitious endeavor requires an unprecedented collaborative effort, one for which UCLA is perfectly suited.

The DGC leverages the interdisciplinary expertise of 25 departments and more than 100 faculty members, technological innovation, community partners and some of the most renowned mental health researchers in the world. UCLA comes at the issue from all angles: researchers in the basic sciences work to unlock the mysteries of the human brain. Psychiatrists offer the best mental health care. Behavioral health tracking helps ensure people who need help don’t fall through the cracks. Social scientists and humanists study the origins of stigma to understand the barriers to seeking treatment. With the help of friends, we build awareness and hope through encouraging open dialogue. Central to the effort is the biggest and most comprehensive depression study in history, which will involve 100,000 participants and connect hundreds of scientists. 

Another exciting component of the DGC is the Innovative Treatment Network (ITN), which already is benefiting students and saving lives through behavioral health tracking and a Resilience Peer Network, which pairs students who need treatment with students trained to help. As more findings lead to better treatments, the ITN will extend state-of-the-art help to more individuals suffering with depression.

We need to work together to bring depression out of the dark. People who suffer with depression can’t get help if they don’t seek it, and many don’t. The DGC is out to change that. To learn more, please visit grandchallenges.ucla.edu/depression.

But meeting this immense challenge requires people to demonstrate generosity of spirit—a willingness to contribute in any way they can. The DGC needs partners who see the value of offering hope and healing to those who need it, people who will think grand and lend a hand in an unprecedented effort to make a major positive breakthrough for humanity.

Be a #DepressionHopeful by sharing this campaign.

Follow UCLA Grand Challenges on Facebook and Twitter to get updates. Start your own conversations about depression and mental health with your family, friends, and acquaintances. We need to talk about depression if we are going to have a chance at healing this global wound.

If you do not wish to receive further fundraising information from UCLA Health Sciences, please either call us at (855) 364-6945 or email us at OptOutUCLAHSD@support.ucla.edu.