Helen Minnis

Helen Minnis is a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow. She studies reactive attachment disorder and other developmental conditions.

Early life and education Minnis earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry at the University of Glasgow in 1985. She remained there for her medical studies and completed a bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery in 1988. Here she worked with children that had been abused and neglected. It was whilst she was in Guatemala that she became interested in attachment disorder. She noticed that children in orphanages would cling to visitors, whilst children in nearby villages hid from strangers. She moved to the Maudsley Hospital, where she trained in psychiatry and focussed her research on children with reactive attachment disorder. She completed her psychiatric training in the University of the West of Scotland before joining the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in 2003. Minnis has studied the mental health of adopted children in Scotland. She found that nurturing parents were incredibly important in a child's psychological development. She has shown that children who suffer from early neglect sometimes have problems with their frontal lobe. In Glasgow she has been piloting the New Orleans Intervention Model, which provides attachment-based assessments for the caregiving relationships of children under five. The process takes a few months, including intensive trials of treatment to improve the relationships of people in their homes. She has been involved with the Scottish Government Scottish Attachment in Action which looks to train and support people about the importance of attachment relationships. She has investigated how reactive attachment disorder impacts other developmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder.

Minnis is part of the Autism Innovative Medicine Studies-2-Trials that studies the biology and development of autism in an effort to inform new treatments. Minnis is a member of the United Kingdom's Black Female Professors Forum. She delivered a TED x talk Lead by admitting you don't know where she spoke about attachment theory and family relationships. In 2011 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Selected publications