Eric Lenze
Wallace and Lucille K Renard Professor of Psychiatry
- Phone: 314-747-2680
- Email: lenzee@nospam.wustl.edu
Additional Titles & Roles
- Head of the Department of Psychiatry
- Professor of Anesthesiology
Education & Training
- Fellowship: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 1999
- Residency: Washington University, St. Louis, MO, 1998
- M.D.: Washington University in St Louis, 1994
Major Awards
- Endowed as Wallace and Lucille K. Renard Professor of Psychiatry, WUSM, 2020
- President, Washington University Medical Center Alumni Association, 2018
- Elected to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Medical Society, WUSM, 2018
- Washington University Distinguished Alumni Scholarship Program honoree, 2017
- Resident Mentoring award from Washington University Department of Psychiatry, 2012
- Best Doctors in America (2005-present),
Areas of Clinical Interest
Anxiety disorders, depression, and brain health in older adults.
Research Interests
I am Dr. Eric Lenze, Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Healthy Mind Lab at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. I earned my MD degree in 1994 and completed my psychiatry residency in 1998 at WashU. Following that, I pursued additional training in geriatric psychiatry. Since 2007, I have been a faculty member at WashU. As of 2022, I have taken on the role of Head of the Department of Psychiatry. I continue to see patients as well.
A main focus of my research is improving treatment for depression, anxiety, and cognitive problems in older adults, with a portfolio comprising over 350 publications, including studies featured in prestigious journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Lancet. These studies have changed our way of treating these common problems.
I am also recognized for my work on COVID-19 research. In 2020, I led a team, along with Dr. Angela Reiersen, to test existing drugs as potential COVID treatments. We successfully showed that the drug fluvoxamine could prevent deterioration in individuals with initially mild COVID symptoms. This groundbreaking research garnered widespread media attention, including a segment on 60 Minutes (https://www.cbsnews.com/video/fluvoxamine-antidepressant-drug-covid-treatment-60-minutes-2021-03-07/). Currently, my team and I are investigating fluvoxamine for long COVID, exploring the potential to repurpose existing drugs to alleviate neuropsychiatric symptoms such as “brain fog.”
I use cutting-edge clinical trial designs to enhance the speed and quality of this science. For instance, I led a study, in collaboration with Dr. Evan Kharasch, demonstrating the equivalence of generic forms of the antidepressant bupropion to the brand form. The study utilized smartphones to allow patients to self-assess their medication response. In my latest study of long COVID, participants can engage from their homes, conducting all aspects of the study remotely, thereby reducing participant burden, accelerating recruitment, and improving outcome measurement quality.
I am also looking for new models of game-changing ways to stop the devastating outcomes suffered by those with mental illness. My most recent research focuses on mitigating the substantial “death penalty” of mental illness. Collaborating with Dr. Breno Diniz, I am exploring the potential of senolytics (medications selectively removing senescent cells from the body) to reverse the aging process in individuals with depression and other conditions associated with accelerated aging, such as schizophrenia and PTSD.
In 2021, in collaboration with Dr. Michael Avidan, I established the first-ever Center for Perioperative Mental Health. This multidisciplinary team is actively testing innovative approaches to bring high-quality, impactful treatment for depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues into the perioperative sector, aiming to mitigate the detrimental effects of mental illness on surgical recovery.
Recent Publications
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Brain resting state functional connectivity changes with aerobic exercise, and mindfulness: A narrative review
Wing, D., Roelands, B., Snyder, A. Z., Yingling, M., Araque, M., Shimony, J. S., Klaus, F., Orav, G., Godino, J. G., Meeusen, R., Lenze, E. J., Wetherell, J. & Eyler, L. T., Jul 2026, In: Sports Medicine and Health Science. 8, 4, p. 407-425 19 p.
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Correction: Pharmacotherapy of major depressive disorder in older adults: from an evidence-informed stepwise algorithm to precision medicine (Neuropsychopharmacology, (2026), 10.1038/s41386-026-02338-w)
Lenze, E. J., Karp, J. F., Gebara, M. A., Nicol, G. E. & Mulsant, B. H., Jun 2026, In: Neuropsychopharmacology. 51, 7, p. 1349 1 p.
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Health system use and experience among people with poor mental health: A cross-sectional analysis of the People’s Voice Survey in 18 countries
Kruk, M. E., Kapoor, N. R., Arsenault, C., Carai, S., Daray, F. M., Doubova, S. V., Ettman, C. K., Garcia, P. J., Getachew, T., Garcia-Elorrio, E., Lenze, E. J., Lewis, T. P., Mazzoni, A., Medina-Ranilla, J., Mohan, S., Naidoo, I., Oh, J., Okiro, E. A., Pate, M. & Rondon, M. B. & 3 others, , May 2026, In: PLoS medicine. 23, 5 May, e1004745.
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A Novel Polygenic Risk Score Indexing Somatostatin-Expressing Inhibitory Neurons Predicts Somatostatin-Expressing Cell Proportions and Severity of Symptoms in Late-Life Depression
Dos Santos, F. C., Zhou, X., Clifford, K. P., Segura, A. G., Syeda, A. S., Felsky, D., Lenze, E. J., Mulsant, B. H., Tripathy, S., Sibille, E. & Nikolova, Y. S., May 2026, In: Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science. 6, 3, 100685.
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The association between major depressive disorder, plasma biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease, and mild behavioral impairment among older adults
Zhu, Y., Trani, J.-F., Singh, R. K., Bekena, S., Williams, J., Lenze, E. J. & Babulal, G., Apr 1 2026, In: Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring. 18, 2, e70337.