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. Trained as a pediatrician, her research focuses on stress-response and regulatory mechanisms in young children at both biological and psychosocial risk. She has published widely in the developmental psychology, pediatrics, and child psychiatry literature.
Given the nature of her work with children at significantly high-risk for developmental impairments from both biological and psychosocial etiologies, Linda’s work also focuses on the impact of parenting on the development of arousal and attention regulatory mechanisms in their children, and specifically on how substance abuse impacts reward and stress regulatory systems in new parents. She is 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.
She and the late Donald Cohen, M.D. are co-authors of The Yale Child Study Center Guide to Understanding Your Child: Healthy Development from Birth to Adolescence, published by Little, Brown.