Learning Objectives
- Understand what deprescribing is
- Understand why deprescribing is important to psychiatry, and which medications to avoid in older adults
- Understand how to deprescribe brain-toxic medications in older adults.
Eric J. Lenze, MD
Dr. Lenze is the Wallace & Lucille Renard Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Healthy Mind Lab at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Dr. Lenze is a geriatric psychiatrist. He graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in 1994 and completed psychiatry training at Barnes-Jewish in 1998. He then completed a geriatric psychiatry fellowship and a T32 research fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, followed by a faculty appointment. He was awarded a K23 award by the NIMH in 2001 and joined the faculty at University of Pittsburgh, focusing on clinical and translational research in geriatric mood and anxiety disorders.
In fall 2007 he returned to Washington University School of Medicine where he founded and leads the Healthy Mind Lab, one of the top clinical translational research labs in the University which has received approximately $60 million in NIH and PCORI funding since its inception.
His research has advanced evidence-based medicine for depression, anxiety, and cognitive disorders in older adults, including studies published in JAMA and The Lancet, as well as numerous publications in top-tier psychiatry journals. He recently completed the PCORI-funded “Optimizing antidepressant treatment for older adults with treatment-resistant depression” (OPTIMUM) study, a large comparative effectiveness study across five North American sites. He is known for innovations in clinical trials, and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, he designed and led the STOP COVID trial, a fully-remote clinical trial which demonstrated the efficacy of the drug fluvoxamine in preventing clinical deterioration in COVID, which was published in JAMA in November 2020. He has also led several mechanistic studies using translational neuroscience techniques, including the series of projects called “Meditation, Education, and Exercise for age related cognitive decline” (MEDEX), to understand how mechanisms of brain aging can be mitigated by lifestyle interventions and potentially reverse or slow down cognitive decline.
Throughout his career he has been a practicing clinician, teacher, and mentor. At Washington University School of Medicine, he founded and leads both the geriatric psychiatry outpatient program and the geriatric psychiatry curriculum for residents and medical students. He also has a leading role in the Psychiatric Residency Research Education Program as well as in faculty development. All told he has trained approximately 120 residents in geriatric psychiatry and has mentored 20 residents in research at Washington University.
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