The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 hope that this month’s focus on how the State Department treats Foreign Service personnel who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder will lead to changes that also benefit personnel dealing with other sorts of mental illnesses. After all, even for people not assigned to war zones, this can be a very stressful career. Though I do not suffer from PTSD, my concern about the department’s handling of mental health treat- ment began a year ago. At that time, I sought help for depression from a local psychologist whose name I got from my embassy’s Web site. Concurrently, I filled out the online form to renew my security clearance. At my first session with the psychologist, she expressed surprise that I wanted a receipt for insur- ance purposes. She informed me that the many embassy employees she had seen over the previous decades had not wanted their counseling sessions doc- umented for fear that they would lose their clearances. I responded that the State Department had publicly stated a few years earlier that it encouraged its employees to seek the help they needed. The psychologist saw me a few times before sug- gesting antidepressant medication; I think she was try- ing to determine whether the depression was situa- tional or chronic. I then called the regional psychia- trist, who agreed and wrote out a prescription. The medication kicked in immediately. From day one, I felt lighter, happier, enthusiastic about life, more energetic and more interested in work. (While overseas, I should note, I had no trouble being reim- bursed for the treatment and prescriptions. But now that I’m back in the U.S., I’ve discovered that I need to be pre-certified for each visit to a mental health practitioner. Otherwise, I’m penalized a considerable amount of money.) Just after the pills arrived, I went for my security clearance interview with the deputy regional security officer. His first question was whether anything had changed since I had submitted the online form, and I mentioned my weekly counseling sessions and the antidepressants. He just nodded in a kindly fashion. Imagine my surprise when, last April, I received an e-mail from a security officer in Washington. It de- manded that I ask the regional psychiatrist to answer a set of questions fully within the next 10 days, and warned me that my medical condition could “affect [my] security clearance eligibility or suitability for em- ployment.” F O C U S O N P T SD & T H E F O R E I G N S E R V I C E E NCOURAGING E MPLOYEES TO S EEK H ELP S TATE OFFICIALLY ASSURES EMPLOYEES THAT UNDERGOING MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT WILL NOT AFFECT THEIR CLEARANCES . B UT IS THAT REALLY TRUE ? B Y A NONYMOUS I The author is a senior State Department Foreign Service officer whose identity is known to the Journal .