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Alliance Alert: This reporting highlights a deeply concerning trend: federal policy shifts are continuing to negatively impact access to mental health services across the nation, leaving veterans and others without the consistent, quality support they need. As staffing shortages grow, wait times increase, and trusted providers leave the system, people are being forced to navigate an already complex system with even fewer resources, often at the expense of their health and stability.

We must push back against these harmful changes and ensure that people, especially those who have served our country, have access to timely, compassionate, and effective mental health services. At the same time, this moment underscores the critical role states like ���������� must play in mitigating the harms of federal policy decisions through strategic investments and system improvements.

For those who want to better understand these federal developments and how ���������� is responding, we encourage you to register for the Alliance’s upcoming Executive Seminar. The seminar will feature in-depth discussions on federal policy shifts, state-level responses, and what advocates and providers can do to protect and strengthen services for people with mental health and substance use challenges.

Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump
By Vernal Coleman, Topher Sanders, Joel Jacobs, and Eric Umansky | ProPublica | March 12, 2026

Reporting Highlights

• Mental Health Staff Losses: Hundreds of mental health professionals left the Department of Veterans Affairs since President Donald Trump took office.
• Veterans Left Adrift: Veterans are facing an array of problems: They can’t get the VA to call them back, they see trusted therapists leave and they can wait as long as six months for therapy.
• Providers Feel the Strain: Mental health workers told ProPublica they left their jobs because of increased work loads, ethical concerns and new policies that they say undermined care.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

As Jason Beaman recounts his long slog searching for mental health therapy last year, he sounds defeated.

The first therapist assigned to him by the Department of Veterans Affairs told him at their initial meeting that she was leaving the agency. A few months later, his second therapist told him she was also leaving. An appointment with a third counselor was canceled with no explanation.

These were huge setbacks for the 54-year-old veteran of the Navy and Army Reserve. Nearly a decade ago, a spiral of depression and anxiety left him homeless and living on the streets of Spokane, Washington. A VA social worker threw him a lifeline, helping him apply for benefits, find housing and get into therapy.

He still needs mental health care, he and his physician say. But bouncing from therapist to therapist has left him exhausted.

“I just quit. I don’t want to mess with the therapist anymore,” Beaman said. He spends much of his time now alone playing video games or walking with his dogs.

After President Donald Trump returned to office last year, his administration announced plans to overhaul the VA, one of the largest health care systems in the country, to deliver “.”

“This administration is finally going to give the veterans what they want,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said last March, as the department announced tens of thousands of job cuts.

But in interview after interview, veterans across the country told ProPublica that one year into the second Trump administration it’s become more difficult to get treatment, as hundreds of therapists and social workers have left the VA. Many of them have not been replaced.

While front-line mental health care workers were largely exempted from the job cuts, hundreds chose to leave anyway. Some cited disagreements with new administration policies, including several targeting the LGBTQ+ community, while others, facing diminished ranks, said they simply could no longer provide proper care.

In January, the department had around 500 fewer psychologists and psychiatrists than it had at the same time last year, ProPublica found.

Although the losses represent a relatively small number — about 4% of psychologists and 6% of psychiatrists — they are notable for an agency that has long struggled . For years, administrators have listed psychologists in particular among their most “.”

Mental health is not the only area where the VA has lost medical staff. The agency has eliminated  vacant health care positions across the system, according to data first reported by The ���������� Times.

Data published by the VA going back to May 2023 shows that the agency was adding psychologists every quarter until Trump’s return to the White House. Then, the trend flipped, with departures outpacing hires in all four quarters of last year.

Compounding the losses, the agency’s cohort of social workers, some of whom are licensed therapists who provide mental health counseling, declined by nearly 700 staffers over the year.

To better understand the departures and their impact on veterans’ care, ProPublica interviewed dozens of former and current VA staffers as well as patients.

ProPublica also examined a previously unreported internal employee exit survey, which included hundreds of responses from mental health care workers.

“Mental Health is understaffed, burned out, and there is not enough mental health care for the Veterans who need the services,” wrote one ����������-based former employee, according to the records.

“Support is no longer there to provide ethical and good care for these Veterans,” wrote a second, based in Indiana. “Scheduling issues are incredibly high due to poor staff hiring and retainment.”

Yet another wrote that the number of new patients seeking help at their Kansas facility was far too high, making it “unethical to accept more veterans in our clinics.”

Many of those vacated positions have gone unfilled due to a yearlong hiring freeze, which was only lifted in January….

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