Welcome to the PMHARC

The Penn Mental Health AIDS Research Center (PMHARC) strives to transform how individuals with comorbid mental illness and HIV 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 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 health/HIV researchers
  • mental health researchers who have not previously studied HIV
  • substance abuse HIV researchers who have not previously studied mental health
  • HIV researchers not previously focused on mental health
  • researchers expert in metabolic phenomena common to HIV and to mental illness