Health
Inside the Turmoil at the V.A. Mental Health System Under Trump
Late in February, as the Trump administration ramped up its quest to transform the federal government, a psychiatrist who treats veterans was directed to her new workstation — and was incredulous.
She was required, under a new return-to-office policy, to conduct virtual psychotherapy with her patients from one of 13 cubicles in a large open office space, the kind of setup used for call centers. Other staff might overhear the sessions, or appear on the patient’s screen as they passed on their way to the bathroom and break room.
The psychiatrist was stunned. Her patients suffered from disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Treating them from her home office, it had taken many months to earn their trust. This new arrangement, she said, violated a core ethical tenet of mental health care: the guarantee of privacy.
When the doctor asked how she was expected to safeguard patient privacy, a supervisor suggested she purchase privacy screens and a white noise machine. “I’m ready to walk away if it comes to it,” she wrote to her manager, in a text message shared with The New York Times. “I get it,” the manager replied. “Many of us are ready to walk away.”
Scenes like this have been unfolding in Veterans Affairs facilities across the country in recent weeks, as therapy and other mental health services have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Among the most consequential orders is the requirement that thousands of mental health providers, including many who were hired for fully remote positions, now work full time from federal office space. This is a jarring policy reversal for the V.A., which pioneered the practice of virtual health care two decades ago as a way to reach isolated veterans, long before the pandemic made telehealth the preferred mode of treatment for many Americans.
As the first wave of providers reports to offices where there is simply not enough room to accommodate them, many found no way to ensure patient privacy, health workers said. Some have filed complaints, warning that the arrangement violates ethics regulations and medical privacy laws. At the same time, layoffs of at least 1,900 probationary employees are thinning out already stressed services that assist veterans who are homeless or suicidal.
In more than three dozen interviews, current and recently terminated mental health workers at the V.A. described a period of rapid, chaotic behind-the-scenes change. Many agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they want to continue to serve veterans, and feared retribution from the Trump administration.
Clinicians warn that the changes will degrade mental health treatment at the V.A., which already has severe staffing shortages. Some expect to see a mass exodus of sought-after specialists, like psychiatrists and psychologists. They expect wait times to increase, and veterans to eventually seek treatment outside the agency.
“Psychotherapy is a very private endeavor,” said Ira Kedson, a psychologist at the Coatesville V.A. Medical Center in Pennsylvania and president of AFGE local 310. “It’s supposed to be a safe place, where people can talk about their deepest, darkest fears and issues.” Veterans, he said, trust that what they tell therapists is confidential.
“If they can’t trust us to do that, I think that a sizable number of them will withdraw from treatment,” he said.
A Veterans Affairs spokesman, Peter Kasperowicz, dismissed the contention that a crowded working environment would compromise patient privacy as “nonsensical,” saying that the V.A. “will make accommodations as needed so employees have enough space to work and comply with industry standards for privacy.”
“Veterans are now at the center of everything V.A. does,” Mr. Kasperowicz added. “Under President Trump, V.A. is no longer a place where the status quo for employees is to simply phone it in from home.” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said the president’s return-to-office order was “ensuring that all Americans benefit from more efficient services, especially our veterans.”
The DOGE cuts have already sparked chaos and confusion within the sprawling agency, which provides care to more than nine million veterans. The Trump administration has said it plans to eliminate 80,000 V.A. jobs, and a first round of terminations has halted some research studies and slashed support staff.
The cuts drive at a sensitive constituency for Mr. Trump, who has campaigned on improving services at the V.A. In Mr. Trump’s first term, the agency expanded remote work as a way to reach veterans who are socially isolated and living in rural areas, who are at an elevated risk for suicide. Now those services are likely to be sharply reduced.
“The end of remote work is essentially the same as cutting mental health services,” said a clinician at a mental health center hub in Kansas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “These remote docs aren’t moving and they have other options if they are forced to drive to some office however many miles away every day to see their patient virtually from there.”
Veterans, too, are expressing anxiety. Sandra Fenelon, 33, said she had a rocky transition back to civilian life after leaving the Navy in 2022. “I just constantly felt like I am at war,” said Ms. Fenelon, who lives in New York and is training to become a pharmacist.
It took a year, working with a V.A. psychologist, until she felt safe enough to begin sharing the troubling things she had seen on deployment, things that, she said, “people on the outside would never understand.”
Now, Ms. Fenelon is worried that the tumult at the V.A. will prompt her therapist to leave before she is better. In her session this past week, she burst into tears. “I feel like I’m now forced to be put in a position where I have to start over with someone else,” she said in an interview. “How can I relate to a therapist who never worked with veterans?”
‘You Deserve Better’
For a suicide prevention coordinator in California, mornings start with referrals from a crisis hotline. On a typical day, she said, she is given a list of 10 callers, but sometimes as many as 20 or 30. The work is so intense that, most days, there is no time for a lunch break or bathroom breaks.
“My job is to build rapport, to figure out what I need to do to keep them alive. I let them know: ‘I’m worried about you, I’m going to send someone out to check on you,’” the coordinator said. “I tell them, ‘You served this country. You deserve better.’”
The team, which is responsible for covering some 800,000 veterans, was supposed to get three more social workers, but the new positions were canceled as a result of the administration’s hiring freeze, the coordinator said.
She said the stress around the staff reductions is intense, and fears it will cause her to miss something critical. “I’m so scared I’ll make a mistake,” she said. “I’m not sleeping well, and it’s hard to stay focused.”
Veterans are at sharply higher risk for suicide than the general population; in 2022, the suicide rate was 34.7 per 100,000, compared to 14.2 per 100,000 for the general population. A major factor in this is the availability of firearms, which were used in 73.5 percent of suicide deaths, according to the V.A.
In Denver, Bilal Torrens was just finishing a shift when he was notified by email that he was being terminated.
His job, he said, was helping homeless veterans settle into life indoors after years of living on the street. During those early months, Mr. Torrens said, the men are often overwhelmed by the task of collecting benefits, managing medications, even shopping for groceries; he would sit with his clients while they filled out forms and paid bills.
The layoffs reduced the support staff at the homeless service center by a third. The burden will now shift onto social workers, who are already staggering under caseloads of dozens of veterans, he said.
“They’re not going to have enough time to serve any of the veterans properly, the way that they should be served and cared for,” Mr. Torrens said.
Alarms Over Privacy
In Coatesville, Penn., mental health providers have been told they will conduct therapy with veterans from several large office spaces, sitting with their laptops at tables, said Dr. Kedson. The spaces are familiar, he said — but they have never before been used for patient care.
“That would sound like you’re seeing them from a call center, because you’d be in a room with a bunch of people who are all talking at the same time,” Dr. Kedson said. “The veterans who are going to be in that position, I suspect they will feel very much like their privacy is being violated.”
So far, only supervisory clinicians have been affected by the return-to-office policy; unionized workers will be expected to report to the office in the coming weeks.
Dr. Kedson said clinicians have warned that the orders compromise patient privacy, but he has seen little response from the agency’s leadership. “They’re doing it because these are the marching orders coming out of the current administration,” he said. “People are trying to make something that is really untenable work.”
Dr. Lynn F. Bufka, head of practice at the American Psychological Association, said the “longstanding presumed practice for the delivery of psychotherapy” requires a private location, like a room with a door and soundproofing outside the room.
She said HIPAA, the health privacy law, allows for “incidental disclosures” of patient information if they cannot be reasonably prevented — a threshold that she said the V.A. risks not meeting. In this case, she said, the privacy risk could be prevented “by simply not requiring psychologists to return to the office until private spaces are available.”
Several V.A. mental health clinicians told The Times they were interviewing for new jobs or had submitted their resignations. Their departures risk exacerbating already severe staffing shortages at the V.A., outlined in a report last year from its inspector general’s office.
“Everybody is afraid, from the top down,” said Matthew Hunnicutt, 62, a social worker who retired in late February after nearly 15 years, much of it in supervisory positions, at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center in Chicago.
When staff were ordered to shut down diversity initiatives, Mr. Hunnicutt decided to speed up his retirement, feeling that “everything I had done was just wiped away.” He said care at the V.A. had been improved during his time there, with better community outreach, shorter wait times and same-day mental health appointments.
“Just to have it be destroyed like this is extreme,” he said.
Alain Delaquérière and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables was found to have a surprising link to lung cancer among younger non-smokers, early research suggests.
The observational study, led by Jorge Nieva, M.D., of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at Keck Medicine, was presented this month at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in San Diego. It has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Researchers looked at dietary, smoking and demographic data for 187 patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer at age 50 or younger.
PANCREATIC CANCER PATIENT SURVIVAL DOUBLED WITH HIGH DOSE OF COMMON VITAMIN, STUDY FINDS
They found that among non-smokers, there was a link between healthier-than-average diets – rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and the chance of lung cancer development.
Young lung cancer patients ate more servings of dark green vegetables, legumes and whole grains compared to the average U.S. adult, the researchers found.
Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables was found to have a surprising link to lung cancer among younger non-smokers, early research suggests. (iStock)
The researchers hypothesized that pesticides applied to conventionally grown produce could be a possible factor in the disease association.
“Commercially produced (non-organic) fruits, vegetables and whole grains are more likely to be associated with a higher residue of pesticides than dairy, meat and many processed foods,” according to Nieva. He also noted that agricultural workers exposed to pesticides tend to have higher rates of lung cancer.
HIDDEN VIRUS INSIDE GUT BACTERIA LINKED TO DOUBLED COLORECTAL CANCER RISK, STUDY FINDS
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking,” Nieva told Fox News Digital.
The disease is becoming more common in non-smokers 50 and younger, especially women – despite the fact that smoking rates have been falling for decades, the researcher noted.
The researchers hypothesized that pesticides applied to conventionally grown produce could be a possible factor in the disease association. (iStock)
“These patients tend to have eaten much healthier diets before their diagnosis than the average American,” he went on. “We need to support research into understanding why Americans – and women in particular – who no longer smoke very much are still having lung cancer,” he said.
DEATHS FROM ONE TYPE OF CANCER ARE SURGING AMONG YOUNGER ADULTS WITHOUT COLLEGE DEGREES
The study did have some limitations, Nieva acknowledged, primarily that it relied on survey data and was limited by the participants’ memories of their food intake.
“Also, the survey participants were self-selected, and this could have biased the findings,” he told Fox News Digital.
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking.”
The researchers did not test specific foods for pesticides, relying instead on average pesticide levels for certain types of food. Looking ahead, they plan to test patients’ blood and urine samples to directly measure pesticide levels, Nieva said.
Although the study shows only an association and does not prove that pesticides caused lung cancer, Nieva recommends that people wash their produce before eating and choose organic foods whenever possible.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE HEALTH STORIES
“This work represents a critical step toward identifying modifiable environmental factors that may contribute to lung cancer in young adults,” said Nieva. “Our hope is that these insights can guide both public health recommendations and future investigation into lung cancer prevention.”
“It is possible that the increased lung cancer risk could be due to pesticide exposure in whole farmed foods, but is by no means certain,” a doctor said. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst, said the study is “interesting,” but that it “raises far more questions than it answers.”
“It is a small study (around 150) and observational, so no proof,” the doctor, who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER
“It is possible that the increased lung cancer risk could be due to pesticide exposure in whole farmed foods, but it is by no means certain,” Siegel went on. “How much exposure is needed? How much of it gets into food and in which areas? This requires much further study.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Kayla Nichols, communications director for Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, a distributed global network, said the organization agrees with the study’s conclusion that more research should be done on the rise in lung cancer, particularly in individuals eating diets higher in produce and fiber.
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking,” the researcher told Fox News Digital. (iStock)
“There is a bounty of existing research that already links pesticide exposure to increased risk of multiple types of cancers,” Nichols, who was also not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. She called for more research on chronic, low-level exposures to pesticides, as well as more effective policies to protect the public from pesticide residues on food.
TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZ
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, as well as industry partners including AstraZeneca and Genentech, among others.
Fox News Digital reached out to several pesticide companies and trade groups for comment.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Colorectal cancer, once considered a disease of older age, is becoming a crisis for younger adults. New research shows one group getting hit the hardest – those without a college degree.
A recent study from the American Cancer Society analyzed data from over 101,000 adults aged 25 to 49 who died from colorectal cancer between 1994 and 2023.
While death rates remained stable for college graduates, they climbed significantly for those without a bachelor’s degree, the findings showed.
WIDESPREAD HABIT MAY RAISE COLORECTAL CANCER RISK MORE THAN YOU THINK
For young adults with a high school education or less, the mortality rate rose from 4.0 to 5.2 per 100,000 people, while the rate for those with at least a bachelor’s degree stayed flat, at approximately 2.7 per 100,000.
This does not mean that a degree offers some kind of biological protection, researchers cautioned.
Colorectal cancer, once considered a disease of older age, is becoming a crisis for younger adults. (iStock)
The difference is likely driven by the conditions in which people live and work, which often correlate with education levels, the researchers noted.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER
The study suggests that the higher death rates are likely driven by differences in the prevalence of risk factors, including obesity, physical inactivity, smoking and diet, which are “known to be elevated among children and young adults with lower [socioeconomic status].”
Because the study relied on death certificates, researchers couldn’t say exactly why college graduates had better outcomes.
Because the researchers didn’t have the patients’ actual medical records, they couldn’t see things like frequency of screenings or treatment options, which would impact survival outcomes. (iStock)
Certificates typically list the cause of death, age, race and education level, but they do not include a person’s full medical history.
RED FLAGS FOR COLORECTAL CANCER THAT WARRANT SCREENINGS BEFORE 45 YEARS OF AGE
Because the researchers didn’t have the patients’ actual medical records, they couldn’t see things like frequency of screenings or treatment options, which would impact survival outcomes.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE HEALTH STORIES
Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death for men under 50 and the second leading cause for women in the same age group, according to recent statistics.
While colorectal cancer death rates remained stable for college graduates, they climbed significantly for those without a bachelor’s degree, the findings showed. (iStock)
Because the disease is highly treatable when caught early, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) lowered the recommended screening age from 50 to 45 in 2021.
TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZ
Common signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer can include a change in bowel habits, such as diarrhea, constipation or narrowing of the stool, that lasts for more than a few days, according to the American Cancer Society.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Other signs that warrant seeing a doctor include blood in the stool or a persistent feeling of needing to go to the bathroom but being unable to go.
The research was published in JAMA Oncology.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A young woman who started vaping at the age of 15 has been given just 18 months to live — after being diagnosed with lung cancer in her early 20s.
Kayley Boda, 22, of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, was engaging in heavy vaping on a regular basis when she started coughing up a brown substance with “grainy bits” in it in January 2025, news agency SWNS reported.
The retail assistant said doctors turned her away eight times, telling her she had a chest infection — until she began coughing up blood.
SMOKING AND VAPING MAY BE BANNED AT ONE STATE’S MOST POPULAR BEACHES AND PARKS: HERE’S WHY
After seven biopsies, Boda was diagnosed with lung cancer. She underwent surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as chemotherapy — and in February 2026, got the all-clear, the same source reported.
Two months later, though, doctors said the cancer had come back in the pleural lining. Now she’s been given 18 months to live.
Kayley Boda, 22, is shown in the hospital. She started coughing up a brown substance with “grainy bits” in January 2025, she said. She had been vaping since the age of 15. (SWNS)
The young woman has now issued a warning to others to be aware of the dangers of vaping.
Boda said she smoked a bit as a young teenager. She took up vaping after that.
Then, “a few months after I switched from reusable vapes to disposable ones, I started coughing up brown, grainy mucus,” as SWNS reported.
TOURISTS MAY FACE STEEP FINES AND JAIL TIME FOR VAPES AT THIS VACATION HOT SPOT
“Doctors turned me away eight times with a chest infection. … Then I started coughing up blood, so they did an X-ray and found a shadow on my lung,” she added.
“They told me they were 99% sure, [since I was] so young, that it wasn’t cancer, so not to worry about it. When I got the results back, and they told me it was lung cancer, it felt so surreal.”
Boda said she was “very naive” before her diagnosis and thought that “something like this would never happen to me.”
She said that she had surgery to remove half of her right lung.
“After the surgery, I started chemo and I had a terrible reaction to it. I couldn’t lift my head up. I was throwing up blood. I was urinating blood. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.”
VACATION HOT SPOT CRACKS DOWN ON VAPING WITH JAIL THREATS AND HEFTY FINES
She said that when she got the “all clear [in Feb. 2026], it felt amazing, but just two months later I was told the cancer had come back, and I have 18 months to live.”
She added, “I’m 22. This isn’t meant to happen to somebody my age.”
“Stay off the vapes because they will catch up with you.”
She blames her cancer on vaping, she said.
“My symptoms started a few months after I started disposable vapes, and there’s no lung cancer in my family,” she said. “I haven’t vaped for three months, I’ve made my partner stop, I’ve made my mom stop, I’m urging all my friends to stop. Stay off the vapes,” she continued, “because they will catch up with you.”
When doctors did an X-ray, they found a shadow on Boda’s right lung. She was later diagnosed with lung cancer and has undergone surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as chemotherapy. (SWNS)
She said she’d been using reusable vapes since the age of 15 and began using disposable vapes a few months before her cancer symptoms started.
DISPOSABLE VAPES MORE TOXIC AND CARCINOGENIC THAN CIGARETTES, STUDY SHOWS
In November 2024, when she developed a rash all over her body, doctors said it could have been due to shingles, chicken pox or scabies, she told SWNS.
‘Nothing worked’
“I got treated for all three, and nothing worked,” Boda said. “It got to the point where I was cutting myself from scratching so hard.”
A few months after that, she began coughing up a dark brown mucus, with “grainy bits, the consistency of sugar, in it,” she said. When the coughing continued, she visited the doctor’s office, but was told it could be scarring from pneumonia or a chest infection, she also said.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER
It wasn’t until March 2025 that she began coughing up bright red blood. At that point, doctors gave her a chest X-ray and told her they’d found a shadow on her lower right lung.
Over the next four months, she had seven biopsies as doctors took samples from the “shadow.” In August, when she went to get the results, she was told she had stage one lung cancer.
Boda is shown in the hospital. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and had surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as chemotherapy. (SWNS)
In September 2025, she had surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, and the surrounding lymph nodes. During the surgery, doctors upstaged her cancer from stage one to stage three after finding cancer in six surrounding lymph nodes, she said.
Following the surgery, Boda was unable to breathe properly and had to learn to walk all over again.
“The oncologist said this is so rare.”
After finishing chemotherapy in February 2026, Kayley was given the all clear, leaving her feeling elated.
TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZ
However, just a month after that, she began experiencing extreme chest pains and was told by doctors she had a pleural effusion — a build-up of fluid in the lungs. She had the fluid removed, but when doctors tested it, they discovered her cancer had returned to the pleural lining of her lungs, giving her 18 months to live.
“The oncologist said this is so rare, and usually something they see in patients that are 80 years old,” she said, as SWNS reported.
Increasingly, vacation hot spots are enforcing strict bans on the use of e-cigarettes in public venues. (iStock)
Boda claimed that doctors were unable to pin her cancer to a specific cause — but told her that smoking and vaping definitely didn’t help.
Since her diagnosis, she has stopped and is urging others to stop, too.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
She’s hoping to raise the thousands of dollars needed for treatment to try to prolong her life, she said.
Last year, Fox News Digital reported on the case of a Pennsylvania woman, 26, who said she vaped for just one year before her lungs collapsed. She was 22 when she took up the habit, she said in an interview.
“Everybody warned me about it, but I didn’t listen — I wish that I did,” she said.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE HEALTH ARTICLES
Dr. David Campbell, clinical director and program director at Recover Together Bend in Oregon, told Fox News Digital at that time that signs of collapsed lungs include sharp chest or shoulder pain, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.
Lung issues are just one of the many health issues linked to vaping, he warned. The habit can also increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, as well as exposure to harmful heavy metals.
Melissa Rudy of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
-
New York26 minutes agoN.Y.P.D. Narcotics Unit Under Review After a Beating Is Caught on Tape
-
Detroit, MI56 minutes agoMI Healthy Climate Conference in Detroit focuses on green funding and strong future
-
San Francisco, CA1 hour agoCalifornia’s New Hotel Edit: The Best Places to Stay Across the Golden State in 2026
-
Dallas, TX1 hour agoThe Brandon Aubrey Deal | DZTV
-
Miami, FL1 hour agoRanking the Miami Heat’s Top Trade Targets
-
Boston, MA1 hour agoFormer Massachusetts doctor faces 81 new sexual assault charges
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoHouston County murder suspect returns to face charges after her arrest in Denver
-
Seattle, WA2 hours agoWest Seattle Tool Library to host annual tool sale this Saturday, April 25 | The White Center Blog