CNHI News Service

SALEM, Mass. -- A "devastated" Gregory Girard has filed a $2.7 million lawsuit against his estranged wife, Dr. Kristine Girard, the former associate director of mental health services at MIT.

He said she misdiagnosed and improperly treated her husband for more than a decade, and then made false claims about him and disclosed private medical information to police and prosecutors.

The suit alleges that Dr. Girard did so simply to gain an advantage, and a bigger share of the couple's assets, in a now-pending divorce.

Bradford Keene, who represents Girard, said his client's life has been "destroyed" by his estranged wife's allegations.

He spent nearly three months in custody, and now his name is irretrievably linked to a high profile case where most of the charges involving weapons possession were later dropped, his lawyer said.

"He absolutely cannot get a job," said Keene, who filed the suit on Monday in Salem Superior Court. "This is a brilliant, brilliant guy. This has just devastated him."

Since their marriage in 1998, the Girards had not only been husband and wife but patient and doctor, an unusual arrangement that came about when Girard went on the MIT health plan, the suit says.

Girard told his wife he had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in his teens.

Over the course of their marriage, the suit says, Dr. Girard repeatedly prescribed various medications, all without ever telling him that her diagnosis had changed or filing a treatment plan.

By the time she went to police, Dr. Girard claimed that her husband was suffering from bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders and was "delusional."

After his arrest, Girard was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for an evaluation.

Doctors there came to a very different conclusion: there were "no signs or symptoms of mental illness."

Girard has since started seeing a psychiatrist, one of the conditions of his court case.

That doctor has also concluded that while Girard suffers from mild depression and anxiety, as well as "significant ongoing stress" as a result of the charges, he had none of the symptoms Dr. Girard claimed to have diagnosed in her husband.

The couple's divorce is heading for trial in March.

Dr. Girard is now living in San Francisco. She obtained a California medical license last month, according to that state's medical registration board. She could not be reached for comment.

Information for this story was provided by The Salem (Mass.) News.