Reid is a genius who graduated from a public high school at age twelve and went to Cal Tech (with Yale as his safety school) at thirteen where he earned three doctorates in Mathematics, Chemistry and Engineering by the age of twenty one. In addition he holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Sociology and is currently working on another degree in Philosophy (4x08 "Masterpiece"). He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute. It has also been stated that while in high school he suffered severe bullying at the hands of his classmates, including an incident when he was tricked into going to meet a girl he liked behind the school field house, where the entire football team was waiting for him. They stripped him naked and tied him to a goal post. He was humiliated and said nothing until he told Morgan (3x16 "Elephant's Memory"). In his youth, his father left him and his mother, no longer able to deal with the paranoid schizophrenia of Reid's mother, Diana. Reid grew up learning nearly everything he knows from books, with his mother often reading to him. Still, Reid knew the way his mother was living wasn't healthy. When he was eighteen, he had his mother placed in a mental institution, Bennington Sanitarium. She is still there, and Reid has stated that although he sends letters every day, he is afraid to visit her up until season four when we see him visit her to learn about his father. Reid is also worried about the fact that his mother's illness can be passed on genetically; he once told Morgan that "I know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind". He grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada and is very adept at all card games.
Spencer Reid is the youngest member of the B.A.U., and has yet to reach his thirtieth birthday. He has had to shoot and kill two UnSub's during his assignment to the BAU. He has also been held hostage, drugged, and tortured at the hands of an UnSub with multiple personality disorder.
It is made clear that the rest of the team is aware of Reid's drug addiction problem that he obtained after being drugged while he was held hostage, but he seems to have improved over the following episodes, and he apparently has been clean for ten months at the end of season three ("Elephant's Memory").
Reid is the godfather of JJ`s son Henry.
