Team Member Spotlight Series: Scott Fears, MD, PhD
February 6, 2020Scott Fears, MD, PhD
Interim Medical Director, Innovative Treatment Network, UCLA Depression Grand Challenge
Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the Jane & Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA
Team Member Focus
In addition to serving as the Interim Medical Director for the Screening and Treatment for Depression and Anxiety (STAND), Scott is the Division Director for Subspecialty Mental Health at the Greater Los Angeles Veteran’s Administration (GLAVA). At the GLAVA, he oversees the development and daily management of the inpatient, consultation liaison and mental health emergency room services as well as several of the outpatient subspecialty mental health clinics. Scott learned about the DGC through his professional connections with many Depression Grand Challenge (DGC) faculty and team members, including Nelson Freimer, Eliza Congdon and Katherine Narr.
DGC Role
Scott works to oversee the operations of STAND at UCLA, through which over 6,000 UCLA undergraduate students have been screened to date. Although Scott was already involved in clinical settings, his involvement in STAND expanded his role in mental health treatment to include the new frontier of assessment and treatment technologies. Scott is inspired by the DGC’s work to define the next generation of assessment and treatment technologies at a large scale. He believes that the identification of how behavioral health tracking can be incorporated into mental health treatment has potential to move mental health in a radically new direction, and Scott is very excited for this potential.
Hobbies
As a transplant from Chicago, Scott enjoys all things Southern California- the ocean, the LA food scene, and spending time in the sunshine with his wife and daughter.
“It is very inspiring to work in the creative space that is going to define the next generation of assessment and treatment to a large scale.”
Learn more about the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge Team Member Spotlight Series.