Demonstrators gathered outside the Department of Veterans Affairs Headquarters in Washington, DC on February 13, 2025. The agency plans to reduce 80,000 jobs.
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El Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In the context of federal firing and executive orders, the Department of Veterans Affairs and patients say mental health and mental health care are facing.
They are afraid that this struggle will deteriorate because VA passes with 80,000 Promised to cut off in the job. The agency is one of the largest mental health care providers in the country.
“I am really struggling with my concentration and ability to focus my attention when I’m at work, because I feel like I have this ax all the time,” said a mental health provider that he told the NPR not to disclose his work position and only to be afraid of his name, Lin.
Given and gender orders
Lin is particularly worried about his clients who identify as LGBT Q, since a Executive Order Federal employees were called “related to equity”, grants or contracts to be called and One more He instructed them to identify only two sexes.
As a result, the VA has instructed employees to remove flags like symbols that indicate transgender or quirky rights. “We are like skirting around it,” says Lin. “Some people have stood in their office, saying that ‘love is love’, or a rainbow. So we are all destructive. “
Physicians from other places have also reported similar concerns that the patient – already in the backward population – is being collected and being subjected to discrimination. They used Lin -like strategies to quietly convey a message of solidarity to patients who identify as LGBTQ.
These rebellions come with a price.
“If I wear these goods, am I going to target my patients or maybe with my colleagues?” Ask Lin. “Because it’s a culture, ‘you need to take a rat on people.”
VA employees have received emails that encourage colleagues who are violating a new ban on diversity, equity and involvement. The leaders of the leaders have also had high profile firing that are Black Or Woman.
Lin says these changes are also destabilizing patients. She says, “We have the patient to go to the medical records and change their chart,” she says, “she says,” to remove their gender identity or their sexual trend because they fear they can be included in a list or discriminated against. “
What can come to anxiety about
Some patients who have a post -traumatic stress disorder say the changes are especially disturbing. A woman, who only asked to identify as DM, says she has been in close anxiety since the changes in the VA started. He served 26 years on active duty as a nurse and a fellow service member sexually assaulted. She says, since she refuses to be alone in the rooms with men.
“Even if you want to occupy the office secretary, you make sure you are not with this man, and it is to protect and protect you,” says the DM.
He says, taking care of both mental and physical health in a women’s clinic has been very helpful. The DM fears that such places will end with the life of the experienced and the military. “We’ll get rid of anything that includes women, transgender, you know, all those things,” she says.
The VA has not announced plans to cut such clinics, and the purpose of gender -related executive order DM references is “protection of women”. In an e -mail statement from VA, spokesman Peter Kasproke wrote, “VA will always provide health care and their benefits to former soldiers, families, careers and survivors.”
Veterans Affairs Secretary, Dog Collins promise protection “Mission critical“Office such as physicians.
Research may end
But some VA employees and former soldiers’ lawyers have warned that getting rid of any staff can compromise in a system that is predicted on a physical and mental health model, including research positions.
“High -quality research is part of high quality care,” says Rashi Romanov, a non -profit CEO of the National Association of Veterans Research and Education Foundations (Navref). The group advocates research for veterans and warns that if the VA does not save between 350 to 400 clinical trials indefinitely, $ 35 million worth of research could be eliminated.
In a statement emailed to the NPR, VA spokesman Kasproke said the agency would continue to fund these programs for 90 days, “while the department would take a comprehensive review of the ongoing research.” According to the collecting Navref data, trials include research on topics such as suicidal reduction and the treatment of material use.
Nurse practitioner Lin says going to work daily feels like she is working on the titanic. She says, “Half of the boat is still in the party in the ballroom and 25 % of them are actively telling me that I am a hysical.”
She plans to ride until she has no choice but to save herself.
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