Francine Cournos (born June 29, 1945) is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry (in Epidemiology) at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Her mother did not talk to Cournos and her siblings about the progression of her breast cancer, so her death shocked the children.
Cournos said that being sent to foster care as harder to take than her parents' deaths and she felt that it was "just the act of being up-rooted from everything familiar."
[1] In the 1980s, Cournos testified in the trial of Joyce Patricia Brown, also known as Billie Boggs, which involved the forced psychiatric care of the homeless mentally ill. Cournos believed Brown was seriously mentally ill and could benefit from medication on the condition that it was not involuntary.
"[1] In addition, she has worked on clinical practice guidelines and policies concerning mental health issues and HIV for the World Health Organization, American Psychiatric Institute and the New York State AIDS Institute.