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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Identifying major depressive disorder in older adults through naturalistic driving behaviors and machine learning
Chen, C., Brown, D. C., Al-Hammadi, N., Bayat, S., Dickerson, A., Vrkljan, B., Blake, M., Zhu, Y., Trani, J. F., Lenze, E. J., Carr, D. & Babulal, G. M., Dec 2025, In: npj Digital Medicine. 8, 1, 102.
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Psychological Support Approaches in Psychedelic Therapy: Results From a Survey of Psychedelic Practitioners
Bender, D. A., Nayak, S. M., Siegel, J., Hellerstein, D. J., Ercal, B. C. & Lenze, E. J., Feb 5 2025, In: The Journal of clinical psychiatry. 86, 1
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Peri-operative mental health interventions for surgical oncology patients: a narrative synthesis and meta-analysis
Abraham, J., Holzer, K. J., Pedamallu, L., Kozower, B. D., Avidan, M. S. & Lenze, E. J., Feb 2025, In: Anaesthesia. 80, S2, p. 54-64 11 p.
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Poor Sleep is Common in Treatment-Resistant Late-life Depression and Associated With Poorer Antidepressant Response: Findings From the OPTIMUM Clinical Trial
Mak, M. S. B., Gebara, M. A., Lenze, E. J., Blumberger, D. M., Brown, P. J., Cristancho, P., Flint, A. J., Karp, J. F., Lavretsky, H., Miller, J. P., Reynolds, C. F., Roose, S. P., Mulsant, B. H. & Stahl, S. T., Jan 2025, In: American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 33, 1, p. 63-72 10 p.
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Polygenic score analyses on antidepressant response in late-life depression, results from the IRL-GRey study
Elsheikh, S. S. M., Marshe, V. S., Men, X., Islam, F., Gonçalves, V. F., Paré, G., Felsky, D., Kennedy, J. L., Mulsant, B. H., Reynolds, C. F., Lenze, E. J. & Müller, D. J., Dec 2024, In: Pharmacogenomics Journal. 24, 6, 38.