December 18, 1998

Ralph Froelich, M.D., is the winner of APA's 1998 Profile of Courage Award. He was recognized for his work with refugees along the Laotian-Cambodian border.

Froelich received the award at last month's Assembly meeting in Washington, D.C.

"In a time where the public sees heroes in athletes and public figures, Dr. Froelich is a hero in the truest sense of the word," said APA Assembly Speaker Donna Norris, M.D. "Dr. Froelich took time away from his life and his practice to be a selfless and untiring supporter of the lost and the abandoned."

Dr. Froelich, sponsored by the American Refugee Committee, worked at a base camp in Thailand in January 1991. The camp had approximately 25,000 refugees and asylum seekers from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. His "hospital" was a 20-bed, open bamboo structure filled with patients suffering from schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depressive disorders. The most dangerous part of his work was monthly visits to border camps along the Laotian and Cambodian border, where he would function as a consultant psychiatrist and neurologist to the permanent medical and nursing staff.

"Uniformly, people who work in refugee camps or similar unique situations return with the feeling that they have gained numerous rewards for the time spent and rarely think of it as a sacrifice-that is true for me as well," said Froelich.

Froelich is a staff psychiatrist with Group Health Cooperative, a health maintenance organization in Madison, Wis.