A new UCLA fellowship will provide arts-based mental health workshops for healthcare workers and civic leaders experiencing stress and burnout.
The fellowship, housed under UCLA’s Health Education through Arts and Research in Thriving Spaces program, aims to bring UCLA psychiatry’s existing arts and health programs – including music, dance, opera and visual arts initiatives – under one umbrella.
“They are an essential component of well-being,” Bath said. “For some reason, the way we built our medical model, we have so much distance from the arts, whereas we shouldn’t,” said Eraka Bath, who oversees the HEARTS program.
Participants will take part in four workshops centered on nervous system regulation, theater and art – as well as visit museums and cultural institutions across Los Angeles, said Patrisse Cullors, the inaugural Visiting Senior Fellow and Artist-Healer in Residence for the HEARTS Program.
The fellowship accepts participants from groups experiencing collective stress, including fire survivors, nonprofit leaders, medical practitioners and organizers supporting communities affected by increased immigration enforcement and incarceration, Cullors added.
“At no time have healthcare workers been more burnt out than the present,” said Bath, the vice chair for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
The initiative comes as healthcare workers and community organizations experience increased burnout and fatigue, Bath said. More than 41% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout in 2025, according to the American Medical Association.
Bath said she believes recent crises in LA – including the January 2025 LA County wildfires, increased immigration enforcement and pressures on the healthcare system – have exacerbated mental health issues.
The Palisades and Altadena fires, which began Jan. 7, 2025, burned over 57,000 acres and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses across LA County. The fires have prompted long-term recovery efforts focused on mental health services, medical care and support for affected families, according to Direct Relief.
President Donald Trump also ramped up immigration enforcement in his second term, with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting an average of 1,264 people per day from December 2025 to January 2026, according to the American Immigration Council. The Trump administration cracked down on immigration in LA, conducting ICE raids across LA in June 2025.
Ed Patuto, the director for audience engagement at the Broad Museum, said the partnership will allow local arts institutions to support frontline workers and other Angelenos experiencing stress and burnout.
Several LA arts institutions, including the Broad Museum in downtown LA, will partner with the fellowship to hold events focused on contemporary art, according to the June 30 press release.
“We’re really interested in what role artists and art organizations play can right now in terms of supporting our local communities,” Patuto said.
Helena Hansen, the interim chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a written statement that she helped launch the fellowship because of her experiences treating people with addiction.
The fellowship program will collaborate with Connect/LA, a coalition of behavioral health organizations and county agencies supporting fire recovery efforts, Bath said.
UCLA also plans to collect data on how the fellowship’s initiatives will positively impact people’s wellbeing, said Hansen, who is also the interim director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience, in the written statement.
“There is growing research and experiential knowledge that creative process builds community, increases hope and helps people to see beyond the grim realities of their current everyday lives,” she said. “The arts inspire, they produce states of awe and gratitude, and help people to see themselves as part of a larger whole.”
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