Following a national search and with great enthusiasm, we are pleased to announce that Linda C. Mayes, MD, has been appointed chair of the Child Study Center at Yale School of Medicine and chief of the Department of Child Psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital, a role in which she has served as interim since December 2014.
Dr. Mayes is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology in the Child Study Center and also serves as Special Advisor to the Dean of the School of Medicine. Dr. Mayes received her medical degree from Vanderbilt, and completed both her pediatric residency and neonatology fellowship at Vanderbilt. Following her neonatology fellowship, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Yale Robert Wood Johnson General Pediatrics Research Program.
Professional Work
She joined the Yale Child Study Center’s faculty in 1985, where she led research on infant learning and attention. Subsequently, she developed an electrophysiology laboratory for studies of emotional regulation, with a special focus on the long-term impact of early adversity on social and emotional development across the lifespan. She is also involved in developing and implementing interventions for children and families in both New Haven and rural settings. She coordinates early childhood clinical and research services and has served as deputy chair for faculty affairs at the Child Study Center.
Dr. Mayes is trained as an adult and child psychoanalyst. She coordinates the Anna Freud Centre program at Yale that includes a master’s program in developmental neuroscience and psychopathology. Most recently, Dr. Mayes holds an appointment as Distinguished Visiting Professor in Psychology at Sewanee: The University of the South where she is part of a Yale team developing a collaborative for Southern Appalachian studies focusing on community resilience.
Research Focus
Dr. Mayes’ research integrates perspectives from child development, behavioral neuroscience, psychophysiology and neurobiology, developmental psychopathology, and neurobehavioral teratology. She has published widely in the developmental psychology, pediatrics, and child psychiatry literature.
Basic science, clinical care, community services, and policy all influence, nurture, and inform each other.
Linda C. Mayes
Her work focuses on stress-response and regulatory mechanisms in young children at both biological and psychosocial risk for developmental impairments, with a special attention to addictive behaviors and processes. She approaches these issues within a neurodevelopmental framework using multi-modal imaging methods.
She also examines a longitudinal two-generation model of parenting abilities and neural circuitry related to parental care in substance-using mothers, as well as the long-term outcome of their offspring’s stress regulatory capacities and reward sensitivity. Additionally, using longitudinal methods, she has studied the relationship between early adversity and later risk behavior, including risk for substance use in adolescence and young adulthood.
Leadership Vision
Under Dr. Mayes’ leadership, the Child Study Center is pursuing ambitious projects in clinical integration and quality-of-care models and measures. By unifying the services of the Center, the aim is to create an integrated experience for patients and better promote the understanding and treatment of mental health across the lifespan and across generations. This integration also involves creating standards for mental health care in the context of population health and value-based care, preparing the Child Study Center for the changing way children’s mental healthcare is delivered and evaluated. Further, it will inform the development of an evidence-based practice unit and a program in implementation science focusing on the dissemination of mental health services for children across communities. A new program emphasizing scholarship and training in health care equity will also encourage innovative partnerships with other disciplines to develop new approaches to mental health care delivery for children and families.
Dr. Mayes is committed to emphasizing the Center’s distinctive ability to have basic science, clinical care, community services, and policy influence, nurture, and inform each other. She proposes developing translational programs in childhood stress and adversity, and plasticity and repair. In addition to strengthening interdisciplinary work within the Center, a variety of partnerships with other departments in the School of Medicine and other organizations devoted to children’s mental health and development are underway.