(Chicago Tribune) — Psychiatrist Marie Claude Rigaud thinks of her late brother-in-law when she talks about her quest to bolster mental healthservices in her native Haiti.
“He is my driving force,” the Aurora resident said of her husband’s brother Gerald Rigaud, who died seven years ago of complications from diabetes. “He was a child psychiatrist who was trained at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He left a very successful career in the U.S. to go home.”
Although Rigaud has not visited her homeland for several years, she has remained connected through her leadership roles in the Association of Haitian Physicians and the Haitian American Psychiatric Association, and through her love and concern for the people there, including close friends and extended family. The son of a close friend was killed in the January earthquake.
