When the help menus pop up automatically, such as the companion info when talking to the companion NPC, they close automatically after a few seconds. This is kind of counter-intuitive. Even if you’re reading it and scrolling down through it, it’ll close on you without asking, and then to finish reading it, you have to manually open the help menu and find the subject you were reading to continue on.
If not turning off the auto-close entirely, it should at least be able to tell that you’ve interacted with it, and then no longer close by itself.