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Mental health care professionals at the Veterans Health Administration say that the stress caused by the actions of the Trump administration has a negative influence on patient care.
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Elon Musk has his “What did you do last week?” E -mails to the entire federal workforce “pulse check” reviews.
“Do you have a pulse and two neurons?” He said to laugh last week during a cabinet meeting of the White House.
Some professionals in mental health care at the Veterans Health Administration do not find it funny. They compare the e-mail campaign for psychological warfare: a Blitz attack, in which each e-mail hits a flash-end grenade focused on discoming the federal workforce.
“Many of us feel that we are being bullied to justify our existence and the value,” said a recognized clinical psychologist, who noticed that the VA has long followed everything she does – how many people she sees, how many phone calls she makes, what time those agreements start, which subjects they discuss and even what handouts or homework she offers.
Now that the weekend is approaching, many federal employees are wondering or another “what did you do last week?” E -mail will soon be on their inbox and remind them of sending in five listing marks of what they achieved on Monday.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the reactions of federal employees to the E -mails – or that another would be sent this weekend.
The mental health care professionals who spoke with NPR about their stress asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the government.
No choice but to respond
The question from Musk for a weekly accounting for performance, sent from an e-mail address of an Office or personnel management (OPM) during off-hours, has greeted federal employees in the government. And yet, because the VA has instructed its employees to respond, the mental health workers who spoke with NPR have the feeling that they cannot ignore the question.
On social media, Musk suggested that employees could lose their jobs if they did not respond. During his cabinet meeting, President Trump said that those who do not respond are “on the bubble, as they say.”
Without quoting evidence, Trump and Musk suggested that there can be people who collect government advice that have moved to other jobs or even dead.
“We just try to literally find out if these people are real, they live and they can write an e -mail,” said Musk.
But the stress caused by the e -mails – on top of all other disruptions that affect the federal workforce, including reports of mass dismissals – takes a toll, the psychologist said.
“I have to keep it together and place it -e -mails, be terminated, while I also answer the worries of veterans about whether I will be there for them in the coming week or month,” she said. “Instead of being able to do good work to tackle their depression, PTSD, sexual trauma, combat trauma, etc., I have to spend time calming their nerves.”
Paranoia in the workplace for fear of being checked
A psychiatrist from another veteran health facility says she was in a parking lot at Costco when they did the first “What did you do last week?” E -mail, it was sent on a Saturday when she was not working and tried to relax with her family.
“If someone who specializes in mental health, I can say with confidence that this weekend e -mails is intended to make federal employees psychologically upset, “she said NPR.
And it works.
“I am anxious and irritable at home,” she said. “I notice that for the first time I doomscrolling, which has a negative influence on my mental health and something that I tell my veterans not to do.”
The psychiatrist also describes a paranoia that has applied to work. Colleagues are careful with what they say in online messages and during meetings, for fear that they will be monitored by Musk and his Ministry of Efficiency of the government, she said.
She assumes that all the answers to the “What did you do last week?” E -mail is analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence, but does not know what purpose does not.
“I really believe this is a bad process,” she said.
Amy Edmondson, professor and social psychologist at the Harvard Business School, understands where that suspicion comes from.
Normally an employer does not reach an employee on his day off, unless it is a real emergency, she says. In the context of the broad urge of the Trump government to reduce the federal workforce, an apparently simple request to list five performance from the previous week at the best case can be at best worrying and in the worst case painful.
“You don’t know what’s underneath,” Edmondson explains. “Where does the sender really want? For whom is it? How will he help?”
A call for duty
This week, the Department of Veterans Affairs set the first basic work for massive dismissals as part of the trump administration’s efforts to “eliminate waste, reduce the management and bureaucracy, reduce the footprint and increase the efficiency of the staff”, with a first goal of cutting more than 80,000 positions of the VA fetched.
The mental health care professionals who spoke with NPR do not know whether they will be affected. Although they have thought of jobs outside the government, they love their work and they 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 and work for the VA do this because of our call to duty to serve those who have served us.”
Do you have information you want to share about current changes in the federal government? Andrea HSU from NPR can be contacted by coded communication on signal on Andreahsu.08.
