Injured Vet Faces Crisis After Getting Fired By the VA

Among the thousands of workers fired at the Department of Veterans Affairs is Joy Marver, who told the New York Times how she checked herself into a hospital for emergency psychiatric care a day after being locked out of her office at the agency.

In addition to her personal story, she is worried about the ripple effect of such cuts on the agency’s ability to provide health care to veterans:

She said she was worried about layoffs affecting the doctors she relied on at the V.A.: the specialist who treated her T.B.I. [traumatic brain injury], the neurologist who managed her migraines, the therapist with whom she relived the rocket attacks, and the psychiatrist who rushed out of a meeting to see Marver as soon as she crossed the bridge, consoling and hugging her until she finally stopped shaking.

The V.A. had been scrambling to hire psychiatrists for years to make up for what it called a “severe staffing shortage” as veteran suicide rates rose to epidemic levels, but now a few new ones had been fired by DOGE because they were still probationary employees. Each V.A. psychiatrist was already responsible for 500 patients, and lately those patients had begun reporting increased rates of anxiety and stress because many of them were also employed by the federal government.

“Nobody wants to serve this country more than veterans,” Marver said. “It’s personal for us.”

“That’s why I love working here,” her doctor said.