The National Health employee said she knows that things will be difficult for federal workers after Donald Trump was elected. But she never imagined that this would be like this.
The worker focuses on Alzheimer’s and other dementia research, among the thousands who suddenly lost their jobs in clearing the workforce in the Trump administration. The way it was terminated – in February by notifying a boiler claiming weak performance, which clearly said it was “incorrect” – made her feel “losing hope in humans.”
She said she could not focus or meditate, and she can barely go to the gym. On the request of her therapist, she set an appointment with a psychiatrist in March after she felt that she would “hit the bottom”.
“I wander in hell,” said the employee, who worked at the National Institute of Armakha, one of the centers of 27 centers who make up the national papers. The worker, just like others who were interviewed in this story, was given not to be identified due to the fear of professional revenge.
She said, “I know I am a mother. I am a wife. But I am also a person who was very happy with her career.” “Take my job and my life from my hand without any reason.”
President Trump and his allies have increasingly distorted nearly two million people who make up the federal workforce, 80 % of whom work outside the Washington, DC. Trump said Federal workers “destroy this country”, called “twisted” and “non -honest”, and they are so lazy. “Many of them do not work at all,” it is He said earlier this month.
Elon Musk – the richest person in the world and who was the Ministry of Governmental efficiency, which was created by Trump’s executive, infiltrated the federal agencies and accelerated collective shooting – He claimed without evidence “There are a number of people on government salaries who died” and others “not real people.” At a conservative conference in February, Musk described what he called the “Vream Series for the Bureaucracy” and said.Waste is largely everywhere“
The shootings that started in February negatively affect the mental health of federal employees. The workers said that they feel exhausted and frustrated, or they got or think about searching for psychological care and medicines, and they are concerned about the ability to pay bills or bear the costs of their children.
Federal employees are preparing for further demobilization after agencies are required to submit plans by this month for employee discounts on a large scale. In the role of uncertainty: After the judges stated that some of the initial shootings were illegal, the agencies employed some workers and put others on a paid administrative leave. Then, Trump was released on March 20 note Employees Management Office gave more strength to launch people via agencies.
Researchers who study jobs say these collective workers do not disrupt the lives of tens of thousands of federal workers, but they will also retreat to their husbands, children and societies.
“I expect this to have long -term effects on the lives of these people and those around them,” he said Jenny BrandProfessor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wrote a paper on The implications of job loss. “We can see this effect for years on the road.”
Studies have shown that unemployed people Experience more anxietyand depressionAnd The risk of suicide. The longer the unemployment period, the more effective effects.
The husbands fight more when one person loses a job, and if he is a man, Increase divorce rates.
Children with one of the unemployed parents More vulnerable to schoolRepeat a degree, or leakage. Brand said it could affect whether they go to college. She said that there is “an effect between generations for instability.”
It does not stop there. When people lose their functions, especially when many people are at the same time, wealth and resources are available in their community It is reduced. Children see Less number of working models. While the families are forced to move, the neighborhood is stable. Often unemployed people Withdrawal from social and civil lifeAvoid societal gatherings, church, or other places that they may have to discuss or explain the loss of their functions.
Although obtaining a new job can reduce some of these problems, they are Do not eliminate themBrand said.
She said: “It is not as if people get new jobs and then take the activities they used to participate in.” “There is no fast recovery.”
Reducing cultural standards
Fire operations are working on a long-term base for the public sector-in exchange for less funds compared to private sector business. People have greater functional security and more generous benefits. Now this is no longer the case, the workers who shot the interviews said.
With the US economy moving towards temporary and disturbing jobs, the decline in a traditional government job was supposed to be “as if I had gone goat,” Blake AlanProfessor of Consultative Psychology at the University of Houston, who is looking at how the quality of work affects people’s lives.
Even federal workers who are still working on the daily question about whether they will be expelled after that. Alan said that this continuous state of insecurity could create chronic stress, Which is associated with Anxiety, depression, digestive problems, heart disease and a set of other health issues.
One of the employees at Medicare & Medicaid, who was granted not to disclose his identity to avoid professional revenge, said that the actions of the administration seem designed to cause sufficient emotional distress that workers voluntarily leave. The employee said: “I feel that this ax will always be above my head as long as I am here and this management is here.”
Federal workers who have transferred jobs in the private sector may feel their wages because they want to serve their country, they may feel a particular smuggling to hear Trump and musk controlling their work as wasting.
“Work is an essential part of our identity,” Alan said. When you suddenly get lost, “it can be really destroyed for your goal and identity, and your hair on the social issue, especially when it is in the climate of reducing the value of what you do.”
Andrew Hazleton, a scientist in Florida, was working to improve the expectations of the hurricane when he was expelled in February from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said that mass shootings are “without humanity.” “This is really difficult.”
Hazleton became a federal employee in October, but he worked alongside NOAA scientists for more than eight years, including as an employee at Miami University. His job as part of cleansing targeted monitoring workers, who lack the protection of civil service against fire.
His friends have created the Gofundme Collective Finance page to provide a financial pillow, his wife and their four children. Then, after a federal judge ordered the federal agencies to cancel this termination, he was notified that he had been returned on paid administrative leave.
“He created a lot of instability,” said Hazleton, who is still not allowed to do. “We just want to serve the public and get our expectations and data there to help people make decisions, regardless of politics.”
Health coverage guarantees
Along with their jobs, many federal workers lose their health insurance, which makes them not strive to search for care as they and their families face a duration of possible mental and physical health consequences. The country’s mental health system is suffering from lack of financing, those with consideration, and its file. Even with insurance, many people Wait for weeks or months To receive care.
Alan said: “Most people do not have a set of money sitting to spend on treatment when you need to cover the mortgage for a few months and try to find a different job.”
A worker at the Second National Health Institutes thought to speak to a psychiatrist and may go to antidepressants due to anxiety after its launch in February.
The worker, who was granted not to disclose his identity to avoid professional revenge: “Then the first thought was after that:” Oh, I am about to not obtain insurance. I can’t do that. ”The health benefits of the worker were set in April – Leave a little time to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, not to mention the start of a prescription.
The worker said: “I do not want to go to something, then I must stop it immediately.”
The employee, one of the many workers of the National Institutes of Health this month, is afraid that the fire will be launched again. The worker focuses on Alzheimer’s and relevant dementia and was an inspiration to join the agency because the grandmother suffers from the disease.
The worker worries that “contracts of research will disappear and people will be left without anything.”
The employee said: “I go from anxiety to deep sadness when I think about my family.”
The National Health Institutes, with its annual budget of $ 47 billion, are the largest general financier of biomedical research in the world. The agency granted Nearly 59,000 grants In the 2023 fiscal year, but the Trump administration began to cancel hundreds of grants on research topics opposed by new political appointed, including vaccine frequency and LGBTQ+.
The National Informatics concerned workers who worked at the National Institute of Agency in mid -March were informed that they will be on paid administrative leave “until further notice.” She said she is not sure whether she will find a similar job, adding that she “could not be at home to do nothing.”
She said, regardless of the love of her job, she has one child in college and another in high school and needs stable income. “I don’t know what to do next.”
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