Welcome to the PMHARC

The Penn Mental Health AIDS Research Center (PMHARC) strives to transform how individuals with comorbid mental illness and HIV/AIDS are treated and managed by developing innovative, interdisciplinary, and integrative approaches to optimize psychiatric, behavioral, and medical outcomes and achieving a better understanding of the biological, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms underlying these combined illnesses and treatments.

The Mission of the PMHARC is to:

• Focus on the combination of mental illness and HIV/AIDS and related comorbidities
• Develop innovative, integrated treatments to optimize psychiatric, behavioral, and medical outcomes
• Achieve a better understanding of the biological, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms underlying these combined illnesses and treatments
• Expand the research base by fostering collaborations among well-established:
  • mental illness/AIDS researchers
  • mental health researchers who have not previously studied AIDS
  • substance abuse AIDS researchers who have not previously studied mental health
  • AIDS researchers not previously focused on mental health
  • researchers expert in metabolic phenomena common to AIDS and to mental illness