- Pronouns:
- he/him/his
- Email:
- lolorenz@iu.edu
- Department:
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Campus:
- IU Bloomington
Biography
Internalizing symptoms like depression and anxiety are leading causes of disability worldwide. Overall, cognitive-behavioral therapies are effective interventions for internalizing symptoms. However, not all who complete a course of CBT treatment experience a remission of their symptoms. Moreover, we do not know who will experience positive outcomes following CBTs, and we have a somewhat limited understanding of how CBTs achieve their effects. I am an expert in CBT for depression and other internalizing symptoms having studied outcomes and processes of change in treatments.
A major line of my work involves exploring the heterogeneity of depression and other clinical problems to uncover individual differences in treatments outcomes and processes, especially those differences that emerge from data-driven approaches. Although I believe that studying individual differences can get us closer to data-driven personalization of treatment for depression and anxiety, I am also aware that many individuals get better without needing “personalization” and that CBTs are very hard to access. So, a line of my work involves studying low-intensity ways of delivering CBTs including by using internet-based CBTs (iCBT) and CBT content delivered via books (“bibliotherapy”).
We know from great work by others that low-intensity CBT can be as effective as CBT delivered more “traditionally” like face-to-face in weekly sessions but our work involves studying the acceptability and dissemination of these interventions to clinicians and patients. More recently, I have also become interested in studying vulnerability to depression and anxiety as can be indexed with data and meta-data that we can acquire from individuals passively (e.g., by mining their social media accounts).