The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016 23 and others who could be of help to the American com- munity. Dr. Esther Roberts, an early director of Mental Health Services (1980-1983), saw these grants as a way to extend the impact of the Foreign Service psychiatry program. In 1981, 12 grants went to posts; a year later, 29 posts received mental health grants, including tiny posts such as Gaborone. The program was very popular with posts, and in a 1983 report, Associates of the American For- eign Service Worldwide recommended: “Mental health grants should be made available more quickly to posts where tension is mounting.” Yet the mental health grant program received year-to-year funding, and was therefore vulnerable to budget cuts. It died in the mid- 1980s when MED leadership changed and enthusiasm for the grants waned. Services for Washington- based employees were increased in the early 1980s. In May 1982, prompted by Medical Director Jerome Korcak, Under Secretary for Management Richard Kennedy established the Special Employee Consulta- tion Service. SECS, later the Employee Consultation Service or ECS, served as the department’s internal employee assistance program, providing short-term counseling and psychotherapy support to both Civil Service and Foreign Service employees at the Department of State and USAID. By 1994, Elmore Rigamer, the original RMO/P, had become One community mental health initiative during the 1970s and 1980s that seemed to work for many embassies was the “mental health grants” program.