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In 2001, Professor Harding combined all of her interests and experience to assume the directorship of the Institute for the Study of Human Resilience (ISHR) and to become Senior Director of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University. The ISHR's vision states " people facing life challenges (such as serious illness, trauma, disability, or disadvantage) are resilient and can significantly improve the healing process when they have access to knowledge, self-help resources, skilled professionals, sustaining environments, and social justice." ISHR contributes to this vision through rigorous research, practical application of findings, and the interactive sharing of information with such persons, their families, the helping professions, and policy makers. A primary emphasis is on resilience, rehabilitation, and recovery of those persons with serious psychiatric disorders. Recently, the American Psychological Foundation awarded Dr. Harding its 2004-2005 Alexander Gralnick Research Investigator Award. This prestigious prize "recognizes exceptional contributions to the study of schizophrenia and other serious mental illness and for mentoring a new generation of researchers." She was appointed Professor of Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine in 2007.

Before her move to BU, Dr. Harding was also a tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Associate Director of the Programs for Public Psychiatry. Areas of specialty included: recovery and improvement of serious mental disorders, schizophrenia, cultural competence, tele-mental health to the frontier states, integrated systems of care for the elder population, mixed methods studies. Simultaneously, Dr. Harding was director of the Mental Health Program at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) which serves the Commissioners of Mental Health in the 15 Western states and was involved in public policy, research and evaluation, workforce training and regional collaboration. Prior to Colorado, Dr. Harding was an Assistant Professor in the Yale Department of Psychiatry and Associate Director of the Center for Prolonged Psychiatric Disorder at Connecticut Mental Health Center. She has also taught as a Visiting Lecturer in Psychology at Cornell Medical School, a Distinguished Clinical Visitor for the Clinical Law Program at the University of Maryland, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Smith School of Social Work and for the past decade as a Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine.

As an extramural investigator for the National Institute of Mental Health, she completed two three-decade studies of schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses, with patients from the state hospitals in Maine and Vermont. Findings indicated that rehabilitation, self-sufficiency, and community integration were the ingredients that promoted significant improvement and recovery rather than the treatment models, which espoused stabilization and maintenance, medications and entitlements. Results also indicated that decisions made at the top of the system sifted down to have an impact on patient outcomes.

Dr. Harding has completed a five-year study assessing the quality of life, levels of function, symptoms, service utilization, and costs of 400 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders across two to three years of their lives in four Colorado community mental health centers as part of a national multi-site study of 2400 such patients. Recently she finished a combined qualitative and quantitative substudy using 900 life histories of those participants.

She has been an invited participant, faculty member, and organizer in over 500 local, state, national and international meetings and conferences, as well as author of 80 contributions to scientific journals, books, and governmental technical reports. She has been a resource for information and consultation about serious mental illness (especially schizophrenia) to patients, families, service providers, policy makers and clinicians.