Scott Johnson has a post at Powerline that is suggestive of the stupidity of the bureaucracy when it comes to mental health issues. A valued Foreign Service officer, interested in going to Iraq to help further our national interests in that crucial state, extremely well qualified, has been side lined by the State Department:
Peter Van Buren has served with the Foreign Service for over 20 years. He received a Meritorious Honor Award for assistance to Americans following the Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe in 1995, a Superior Honor Award for assisting an American rape victim in Japan and another award for work in the Tsunami Relief efforts in Thailand.
Unlike many of his colleagues, he has worked extensively with the military while overseeing evacuation planning in Japan and Korea. This experience includes multiple field exercises and drills, plus civil-military conferences in Seoul, Tokyo, Hawaii and Sydney, working closely with allies from the UK, Australia and elsewhere. He was selected to travel to Camp Lejeune in 2006 to participate as "Ambassador" in a week-long field exercise that included simulated Iraqi conditions and problems. Van Buren spent a year on the Hill and brings that understanding of Congress to Iraq.
Sounds like the kind of guy you'd want in a PRT in Iraq, right?
Van Buren wants to go, and the assignments office in the Department offered him a senior team leader job in Anbar. The problem is that Van Buren suffers from depression, treated with the drugs you see advertised on TV all the time, and the State Department Medical Office says they can't support depressed people in Iraq.
Med came to the stunning conclusion in Van Buren's case that "there are strong safety and health concerns for any in Iraq at this time. In addition, living conditions are most austere." Better yet, Med first approved Van Buren for Iraq and then pulled the decision back a week later after the Medical Officer in Baghdad, there for only one week, balked.
There is far too little information in this post to determine the level of risk of relapse for Peter Van Buren. Early in treatment, or if he has a history of repeated depressions despite adequate treatment, he would be at an elevated risk of treatment failure or relapse, while if he were stable and had an adequate grasp of the dynamics of his illness, an appreciation of early warning signs, and an awareness of treatment contingencies, there is no reason he could not be expected to do well in Iraq performing his duties. I do not have the time today to address all or even many of the issues related to depression and its manifestations, but the goal of our treatment is always to return the sufferer to normal functioning; once a full remission is achieved they are considered to have no functional limitations. A history of depression is not a disability, even while active depression can be disabling.
Bureaucracies tend to react to the lowest common denominator. Bureaucratic safety requires the avoidance of risk. This case sounds like a situation where ignorance of the actual risks of relapse have led to a good and honorable public servant being prevented from furthering our national interests. This is the kind of thinking that facilitates rule by the mediocre.
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