State Department employees face 'stigma' for seeking mental health help

Foreign Policy/The Washington Post: The State Department is attempting to change how it handles mental health services for employees with high-stress jobs, "but there's still a great deal of stigma attached to seeking this kind of help," an internal report says. The State Department's Office of Inspector General is calling on the department to "remove the stigma by issuing a high-level statement encouraging returning diplomats to use the mental health tools at their disposal." Several programs and many mental health professionals wait for employees to take advantage of the programs. "There are also more social workers and psychiatrists than ever at the embassies in Baghdad and Kabul, but according to the OIG it's unclear whether there are enough. The report recommends the department survey the war zones to see if diplomats' mental needs are being adequately addressed" (Rogin, 8/5).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.