Linda C. Mayes, MD

Dr. Linda Mayes is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology and Director of the Yale Child Study Center. She is also Special Advisor to the Dean in the Yale School of Medicine focusing on scientific conduct and academic integrity. A graduate of the Sewanee: The University of the South as a member of the first class of women, Dr. Mayes received her medical degree from Vanderbilt University where she also completed a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in neonatology.   Dr. Mayes joined the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine in the Yale Child Study Center where she established a research laboratory focusing on the neuropsychological development of young children growing up in adverse circumstances.  She has followed children exposed to drugs prenatally for over two decades well into these individuals becoming parents themselves.  Given her work with children at significantly high-risk for developmental impairments because of exposure to biological and environmental adversity, Dr. Mayes also studies how adults transition to parenthood, especially when substance abuse is involved, and the basic neural circuitry of early parent-infant attachment. She and her colleagues have developed a series of interventions for parents including an intensive home-based program called Minding the Baby. Dr. Mayes’s research programs are multidisciplinary, not only in their blending basic science with clinical interventions but also in the disciplines required including adult and child psychiatry, behavioral neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, and neuropsychology.   Her work is published widely in the developmental psychology, pediatrics, and child psychiatry literature.   Dr. Mayes is also trained as an adult and child psychoanalyst and provides clinical care to young children and their parents.  She teaches and supervises clinical fellows in child psychiatry, social work, psychology and pediatrics as well as mentors research fellows work in her laboratory, many of whom have gone onto their own research and clinical careers in academic centers.  Finally, Dr. Mayes is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor in psychology at Sewanee: The University of the South where she is working on intervention programs to enhance child and family resilience and teaches about child and family development in rural Appalachia.