Anxiety clinical trials at UCSF
6 in progress, 3 open to eligible people
MM120 for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (Voyage)
open to eligible people ages 18-74
A Phase 3 Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Study (Part A) with an Open-label Extension (Part B) Evaluating MM120 Compared to Placebo in Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Voyage
San Francisco, California and other locations
BLOOM: Boldly Living outdOOrs for Mental Health
open to eligible people ages 9-12
In 2019, the Office of the California Surgeon General launched the ACEs Aware Initiative in collaboration with the California Department of Health Care Services. This ambitious campaign aims to develop a network of care model of healthcare delivery that explicitly links health resources within communities to clinicians screening patients for ACEs. The ACEs Aware Initiative recognizes nature experiences as one of seven "stress busters." Indeed, California boasts many outdoor resources for clinicians to integrate into the network of care. Through a calming effect on the autonomic nervous system, providing a setting for supportive relationships to develop and physical activity to occur, time in nature may help California prevent, heal and treat ACEs and the clinical sequelae. As one of the most common psychiatric disorders in youth, anxiety remains one of the most important sequelae of ACEs. There is a gap in evidence evaluating nature-based programs for child mental health. This study will evaluate BLOOM [Boldly Living outdOOrs for Mental health], a new intervention which is a modified version of an existing nature-based curriculum called SHINE (Stay Healthy In Nature Everyday) curriculum currently in place at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, which takes youth and their families into nature once a month for stress relief. This new intervention mirrors SHINE except that it will be tailored to children ages 9-12 with a history of ACEs and current anxiety. This study will evaluate the benefits of a group intervention model, an independent nature-outing model, and a comparison to a wait-listed control group. Our goal is to provide a scalable model for low-cost mental health care to the California Department of Health Care Services.
Oakland, California
The Reducing Risk Study
open to eligible people ages 12-18
The present study will test an innovative mobile health adaptation of a behavioral intervention that improves sleep and mental health concerns among adolescents.
San Francisco, California
By Youth, For Youth: Digital Supported Peer Navigation for Addressing Child Mental Health Care
Sorry, not yet accepting patients
Despite significant progress in research, practice, and policy over the past few decades, many children and youth continue to experience poor mental health outcomes. With their unrivaled ability to reach youth, school-based services and primary care are ideal hubs to provide mental health, healthcare, social services, and prevention to youth and families who otherwise face barriers to care. Using Participatory Design and Community Partnered Participatory Research (CPPR) for app development, mobile technology is designed to optimize access to wellness resources. The proposed intervention is a model of care using technology and navigators for connecting youth ages 13-22 to mental health care and supports. The app is co-created with the community and supported by culturally responsive individuals called family and youth navigators, in schools and primary care clinics. Outcomes are measured using the cascade of care model.
Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Human Emotion Network
Sorry, accepting new patients by invitation only
The overall goal of this study is to elucidate how emotion network dynamics relate to the behavioral, autonomic, and experiential changes that accompany emotions and to investigate how emotion network dysfunction relates to affective symptoms. Affective symptoms are a common feature of neuropsychiatric disorders that reflect dysfunction in a distributed brain network that supports emotion. How aberrant functioning in a single emotion network underlies a wide range of affective symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, is not well understood. Anchored by the anterior cingulate cortex and ventral anterior insula, the emotion network responds to numerous affective stimuli. The recording of neural activity directly from the cortical surface from individuals is a promising approach since intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) can provide direct estimates of neuronal populations to map the spatiotemporal dynamics of the emotion network at a millisecond level resolution. This study will exam how activity within emotion network hubs changes during emotions and how emotion network properties make some individuals more vulnerable to affective symptoms than others. A multidisciplinary approach is critical for understanding the dynamic brain network to advance neuroanatomical models of emotions and for guiding the development of novel treatments for affective symptoms.
San Francisco, California
SKY Breath Intervention
Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients
Depression is highly debilitating and prevalent among adolescents. Adolescent-onset depression is associated with long, severe, and recurrent episodes that are often not responsive to treatment. There is a dire need to develop novel treatments that are efficient, cost-effective, and tolerant for this population. Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) is a breath-based meditative practice that entails a sequence of specific breathing techniques to help practitioners achieve a state of calm alertness. It has offered benefits as a therapeutic option for mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety disorders and as an adjunctive treatment in patients with major depressive disorder, but the neurological mechanism of SKY breath intervention is still not fully understood. The goal of this study is to determine the efficacy of SKY breath intervention in treating depressed adolescents and to understand its mechanisms. In this study, thirty depressed adolescents and thirty healthy controls will be recruited to evaluate the efficacy of the 8-week SKY intervention. Assessment for depression and anxiety, salivary cortisol, resting heart rate, blood pressure, and neuroimaging will be collected at the baseline, 4 weeks into SKY intervention (questionnaires only), and post-intervention. This will be the first study to evaluate the potential benefits of of SKY breath intervention as a treatment option for depressed adolescents.
San Francisco, California
Our lead scientists for Anxiety research studies include Edward F Chang, MD Lauren Asarnow, PhD Nooshin Razani, MD MPH Yan Li, PhD Virginia Sturm, PhD.
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