This consortium is intended to bring together outstanding researchers within the depression prevention field. The consortium covers multiple disciplines and includes research and insights from psychology, medicine, epidemiology, economics, demographics, technology, and culture.

At our invitational meetings, researchers from various fields present cutting-edge research, identify the most pressing issues within depression prevention, and brainstorm the most useful strategies to actualize the dream of preventing depression locally and globally.

Ricardo F. Muñoz
Conference organizer, on behalf of the Consortium

Local Hosts: Christina Khan, Daryn Reicherter, Alan Louie, and Laura Roberts
Global Mental Health Initiative, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

The 5th consortium meeting is sponsored by the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

About the Consortium

Dear friends and colleagues,

After the great success of our meetings in Pittsburgh (June 2009), Utrecht (September 2011), Pittsburgh (October 2013), and Bergen (September 2015), we are pleased to invite you to the Fifth Meeting of the Global Consortium for Depression Prevention on December 8 and 9, 2016, at Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

Participants from previous meetings and additional experts are being invited for this meeting. The name list with contact information will be updated in the participants section as we receive responses from invitees.

This expert meeting is aimed at researchers across the world who are familiar with the main factors that are likely to shape the depression prevention research agenda (epidemiologic, economic, demographic, technological, cultural), and who can translate these insights into innovative and relevant forms of prevention research.

At the meeting in Stanford, the theme will be:

“A Global Plan for Depression Prevention:
Toward Worldwide Scalable Interventions to Address Population Health"

We will emphasize joint discussions on how the field should move forward. A broad range of topics will be discussed, including identification of populations at imminent high risk for depression, empirically supported interventions to prevent depression, research designs for prevention trials, and how to scale research studies and public health campaigns so that we can eventually document impact on incidence of depression at the population level.

We are inviting brief presentations organized by topic area, and plan to allow ample time for discussion among presenters and attendees. We want to take advantage of the opportunity of being physically together to allow us to brainstorm promising ideas that may not occur to teams working apart.

All invited participants are invited to submit abstracts for presentations on topics they find relevant for the consortium. For the upcoming meeting, special attention will be paid to the following topics:

  • Identification of high risk individuals, groups, and communities
  • Empirically supported preventive interventions shown to reduce the incidence of major depressive episodes
  • Research designs that are feasible to conduct with the large sample sizes required for prevention trials
  • Methods to scale up intervention studies, including Internet interventions, mobile apps, text messaging, and other digital tools.
  • Studies focused on diverse populations, including participants from rural areas, those with low incomes and limited education, and residents of developing countries
  • Multidisciplinary studies that include psychological, genetic and other biological elements, economic analysis of cost and cost-effectiveness, statistical methods to measure prevention effects.
  • Studies on how to reduce the impact of depression on other outcomes, such as suicide, substance abuse, and unemployment.
  • Studies or proposals for translating research into evidence informed prevention policies