Ryan Petros earned his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice in 2017. He received an MSW from the University of Minnesota and a BA in social work and English from St. Olaf College.

His research interests focus on self-management programs for adults with serious mental illness, enhancing the effectiveness of mental health interventions; issues of homelessness and permanent supportive housing; and community integration. He is particularly interested in mixed-methods research and has been working on projects using multimedia strategies to collect data, such as auto-videography.

As a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Petros’ work has examined recovery from different perspectives. He assessed the mechanisms by which adults with serious mental illness learn and use self-management strategies to pursue recovery and he has investigated the propensity of social workers to provide recovery-oriented services. He is currently studying the role of violence in families who have a relative with a serious mental illness.

Petros also focuses on community integration, using participatory research to partner with providers at a community-based mental health agency to develop a scale that measures community integration, and is currently assessing its psychometric properties. He also investigated permanent supportive housing as part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) national evaluation of homeless programs.