Longtime UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences member, psychiatrist, and community leader Miriam Gould (Shain), MD, passed away on Aug. 10, 2024, at the age of 99. She was preceded in death by her husband, Harold Shain, and is survived by three daughters, four grandchildren, and countless San Franciscans whose lives were touched by her tireless compassion and advocacy on their behalf.
Miriam Gould (Shain), MD
Dr. Gould graduated from UCSF Medical School in 1950 and completed her residency in psychiatry at the Langley Porter Clinic in 1954. Afterwards, she remained at UCSF as a member of Department of Psychiatry and staff psychiatrist at Student Health Services (SHS) at both UCSF and the UC College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly known as the UC Hastings College of Law).
Over a career that spanned 65 years at UCSF, she rose to become the senior staff psychiatrist at SHS and served in a variety of other roles, including as a member of the School of Medicine’s admissions committee and faculty advisor for Synapse, the university’s student-run newspaper. Dr. Gould was a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and participated in the White House Conference on Children and Childhood Nutrition.
In 1968, she co-founded the Haight-Ashbury Children’s Center. Originally intended as a daytime child care facility serving an ethnically diverse neighborhood that had been rapidly transformed by the Summer of Love, it quickly became one of San Francisco’s key food distribution programs for children in low-income families. Dr. Gould was honored with the UCSF Chancellor’s Award for Public Service in 1975 for her work as the center’s director and her efforts to champion support for the release of surplus government food to all San Franciscans in need.
When asked to explain her special interest in the welfare of children, Gould explained in a 1975 interview, "I think their helplessness appeals to me and the silence of their request demands justice. I was very poor myself, so I'm interested in poor children. If you're very poor, there's only one way to go and that's up."
"Working with children makes the biggest difference. The difference between a well-fed child and an undernourished child is a full life or half a life."
"Besides which," she added, "children are fun."
Dr. Gould’s family will hold a virtual memorial service via Zoom at 12:00 p.m. PST on Sunday, October 27, 2024. Those wishing to attend should contact Sara Shain, DrPH.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
