Mental health professionals from the Veterans Health Administration claim that the stress caused by the Trump administration actions has a negative impact on patient care.
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Elon Musk called his “What did you do last week?” E -mail to all federal opinions of “verification of the pulse”.
“Do you have a pulse and two neurons?” He said to laugh at a meeting of the White House cabinet last week.
Some mental health professionals with the Health Administration Veterans do not find this funny. They compare the electronic mail campaign to psychological warfare: a blitz attack, each e-mail striking like a flash-bang grenade aimed at decorating the federal workforce.
“Many of us have the impression of being victims of intimidation to justify our existence and our value,” said an approved clinical psychologist, who noted that the VA has long followed everything she does – how many people she sees, how many telephone calls she makes, at what time these meetings are starting and ending, what subjects they discuss and even what recovery or their work.
As the weekend approaches, many federal workers wonder if another “What did you do last week?” The email will soon arrive on their reception boxes, reminding them of sending five chips of what they did on Monday.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the reactions of federal employees to emails – or if another would be sent this weekend.
The mental health professionals who spoke with NPR of their stress asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from the government.
No choice to answer
Musk’s request for weekly accounts of achievements, sent by an email address of personnel management (OPM) during opening hours, disturbed government workers. And yet, because the VA has asked its employees to respond, the mental health agents who spoke at NPR believe that they cannot ignore the demand.
On social networks, employees suggested by Musk could lose their jobs if they did not answer. At his meeting of the cabinet, President Trump said that those who did not answer “are on the bubble, as they say.”
Without citing evidence, Trump and Musk suggested that there could be people who collect government payrolls that have passed to other jobs or may even be dead.
“We literally try to understand that these people are real, are they alive and can they write an email,” said Musk.
But the stress caused by emails – in addition to all other disturbances hitting the federal workforce, including notifications of mass dismissal – wreaking havoc, said the psychologist.
“I have to stay together and appease the emails of the OPM, or end myself, while responding to the concerns of veterans as to whether I will be there for them the week or the month,” she said. “Instead of being able to do a good job to fight against their depression, the SSPT, sexual trauma, combat trauma, etc., I have to spend time calming their nerves.”
Paranoia at the workplace for fear of being monitored
A psychiatrist from another veterans health establishment says she was in a parking lot at Costco when she saw the first “What did you do last week?” Email, which was sent on a Saturday when she was on leave and tried to relax with her family.
“”As a person who specializes in mental health, I can say with confidence that this weekend by email is intended to psychologically upset federal workers, “she told NPR.
And it works.
“I am anxious and irritable at home,” she said. “I find myself conceiving for the first time, which has a negative impact on my mental health and something I tell my veterans not to do.”
The psychiatrist also describes a paranoia that has settled. Colleagues pay attention to what they say in online messages and during meetings for fear of being monitored by Musk and his government ministry, she said.
She assumes that all the answers to “What did you do last week?” E-mails are analyzed using artificial intelligence, but do not know what end.
“I really think it’s a harmful process,” she said.
Amy Edmondson, professor and social psychologist at the Harvard Business School, understands where this suspicion comes from.
Normally, an employer does not contact a worker on the day of leave unless it is a real urgency, she said. In the context of the Large push of the Trump administration to shrink the federal workforce, an apparently simple request to list five achievements of the previous week could at best be worrying and painful in the worst.
“You don’t know what’s below,” says Edmondson. “What does the sender really want? For whom is it? How will it help?”
A call to duty
This week, the veterans department has laid the initial bases of mass dismissals in the context of the Trump administration efforts to “eliminate waste, reduce management and bureaucracy, reduce the footprint and increase the efficiency of the workforce”, with an initial objective of reducing more than 80,000 positions across the Department, according to a memo will be shared by the American Federation of Government Employees.
Mental health professionals who spoke with NPR do not know if they will be affected. Although they thought of jobs outside the government, they like their work and do not want to leave the veterans they have helped.
“In the private sector, I could work with” easier “or less complicated patients,” said the psychologist. “The reality is that those of us who choose to come to work for the Va do because of our call to the duty to serve those who served us.”
Do you have any information you want to share on current changes through the federal government? Andrea HSU of NPR can be contacted through encrypted communications on the signal in Andreahsu.08.
