Center for Healthy Minds

Center for Healthy Minds Founder and Director Richard Davidson Speaks at UW–Madison Chancellor's Investiture in April 2023.

While recent studies and polls indicate the nation is in the midst of a mental health crisis, the situation in academia is even more grim: Within the high-stress, high-pressure, often socially isolated world of advanced education, graduate students experience depression and anxiety at six times the rate of the general population.

A newly published CHM study is among the first to collect empirical data on school employees’ mental health early in the pandemic

Globally in the past year, as many as 1 billion children experienced violence or neglect. A new collaborative study involving scientists at the UW–Madison Center for Healthy Minds provides physiological evidence that group therapy involving mindfulness, creative expression and reprocessing of traumatic experiences can help these victims begin to heal.

Significant concerns have been raised about the mental health crisis on college campuses, with attention turning to what colleges can do beyond counseling services to address students’ mental health and well-being. In a newly published multi-university study, scientists found that students who completed the Art and Science of Human Flourishing course, demonstrated improved mental health, strengthened skills, perspectives and behaviors associated with flourishing.

Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds has isolated the changes in pain-related brain activity that follow mindfulness training — pointing a way toward more targeted and precise pain treatment.