Anja Mehnert PhD

Anja Mehnert studied Psychology at the University of Hamburg and Health Economics at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel. She received her PhD on acute and post-traumatic stress disorder in breast cancer patients in 2005. She then spent a year as a postdoctoral research fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and habilitated on return to work and psychosocial health status in cancer survivors in 2010. She became licensed as a psychotherapist in 2013.

She has held a lectureship and senior lectureship at the Department of Clinical Psychology of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and has held the chair of the Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology at the University Medical Center Leipzig, Germany since 2013. Dr Mehnert’s main focus of research includes the prevalence of mental disorders in cancer patients and the impact of cancer and treatment-related factors as well as psychosocial factors on the occurrence of psychosocial distress and mental disorders.

She has been the PI in a large epidemiological study investigating the prevalence of mental disorders across major tumour entities, treatment phases and settings in Germany – one of the largest epidemiological studies in psycho-oncology today. She also has gained extensive expertise in investigating issues of employment and work in cancer survivorship. A third research focus is on the topic of distress and demoralization in patients with advanced disease and palliative care.