I agree that there is a real issue here that needs to be addressed, and I wasn’t claiming that there is no reason to have support—just that there is a reason to compartmentalize.
And yes, US military use of mental health resources is off-the-charts. But in the intelligence community there are some really screwed up incentives, in that having a mental health issue can get your clearance revoked—and you won’t necessarily lose your job, but the impact on a person’s career is a great reason to avoid mental health care, and my (second-hand, not reliable) understanding is that there is a real problem with this.
Seconding this: When I did classified work at a USA company, I got the strong impression that (1) If I have any financial problems or mental health problems, I need to tell the security office immediately; (2) If I do so, the security office would immediately tell the military, and then the military would potentially revoke my security clearance. Note that some people get immediately fired if they lose their clearance. That wasn’t true for me—but losing my clearance would have certainly hurt my future job prospects.
My strong impression was that neither the security office nor anyone else had any intention to help us employees with our financial or mental health problems. Nope, their only role was to exacerbate personal problems, not solve them. There’s an obvious incentive problem here; why would anyone disclose their incipient financial or mental health problems to the company, before they blow up? But I think from the company’s perspective, that’s a feature not a bug. :-P
(As it happens, neither myself nor any of my close colleagues had financial or mental health problems while I was working there. So it’s possible that my impressions are wrong.)
I don’t specifically know about mental health, but I do know specific stories about financial problems being treated as security concerns—and I don’t think I need to explain how incredibly horrific it is to have an employee say to their employer that they are in financial trouble, and be told that they lost their job and income because of it.
I agree that there is a real issue here that needs to be addressed, and I wasn’t claiming that there is no reason to have support—just that there is a reason to compartmentalize.
And yes, US military use of mental health resources is off-the-charts. But in the intelligence community there are some really screwed up incentives, in that having a mental health issue can get your clearance revoked—and you won’t necessarily lose your job, but the impact on a person’s career is a great reason to avoid mental health care, and my (second-hand, not reliable) understanding is that there is a real problem with this.
Seconding this: When I did classified work at a USA company, I got the strong impression that (1) If I have any financial problems or mental health problems, I need to tell the security office immediately; (2) If I do so, the security office would immediately tell the military, and then the military would potentially revoke my security clearance. Note that some people get immediately fired if they lose their clearance. That wasn’t true for me—but losing my clearance would have certainly hurt my future job prospects.
My strong impression was that neither the security office nor anyone else had any intention to help us employees with our financial or mental health problems. Nope, their only role was to exacerbate personal problems, not solve them. There’s an obvious incentive problem here; why would anyone disclose their incipient financial or mental health problems to the company, before they blow up? But I think from the company’s perspective, that’s a feature not a bug. :-P
(As it happens, neither myself nor any of my close colleagues had financial or mental health problems while I was working there. So it’s possible that my impressions are wrong.)
I don’t specifically know about mental health, but I do know specific stories about financial problems being treated as security concerns—and I don’t think I need to explain how incredibly horrific it is to have an employee say to their employer that they are in financial trouble, and be told that they lost their job and income because of it.