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Gerhard Lenz awarded Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st Class

Honour for expert in affective disorders and behavioural therapy
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(Vienna, 11 November 2020) Gerhard Lenz, expert in affective disorders and behavioural therapy at MedUni Vienna's Division of Social Psychiatry has been awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st Class. He counts as one of the world's leading experts in behavioural therapy.

Following a research placement at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, Gerhard Lenz concentrated on diagnosis and relapse prevention in schizoaffective psychosis, gaining his postdoctoral qualification in this subject in 1987. He served as the interim head of the Division of General Psychiatry from 1991 until 1993.

As well as the range of topics associated with schizoaffective disorders, he studied numerous other topics such as psychopathology and research into the development of psychosis, treatment of therapy-resistant depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder. He also studied psychiatric rehabilitation and especially behavioural therapy.

Gerhard Lenz was one of the first in Europe to investigate specialist medical training and to publish scientific papers on the subject. Through his work, he played a major role in the inclusion of psychotherapy as an integral component of specialist medical training. As well as numerous journal articles, he published several books, some of which have become standard works in the teaching of students. In the mid-2000s, he set up the MedUni Vienna PhD programme in "Mental Health and Behavioural Medicine", which is still running today and is proving highly successful in training young scientists.