imagine you're a black intelligence officer in a forei
country tasked with recruiting a person who's profiting
from slave labor or spending your nights at the office
watching drone footage of explosions after your mother
dies of cancer. Do you think that people on the outsid
understand what intelligence of go through No, no,
I don't, I don't believe that people on the outside can
fully comprehend what intelligence officers go throug
Janicki Cates and other former senior intelligenc
officers who spoke with Newsy for this story have never
shared their mental health challenges with the news
organization. I was one of few minority females, um
female leaders at the agency. Um, I, because of the
stigma around mental health, I really felt like I
didn't want to admit that I needed help. She had worked
in a conflict zone but says another battle began after
her second son was born. It suddenly I woke up after
his first birthday and realized why do I still cry
every day coming into work and why do I say, still have
these thoughts of like he's gonna get really sick or
something really terrible is going to happen. She was
later diagnosed with anxiety and delayed postpartum
depression for Douglas wise, it was alcohol, they could
smell it on me when I came to work in the morning. Th
first time, I knew it was when literally it was a
intervention by my colleagues and by my supervisor and
literally called me into the office and said you have a
serious problem and you need to do something about it.
Are there a lot of intelligence officers who seek
your advice and want to learn about your experience I
would say I probably get a call about every month and
every other month. Intelligence officers aren't al
to share classified information with a therapist
outside of their agencies. And some worry that speaking
candidly with a therapist on the inside may hurt their
careers in a place that keeps secrets. There are no
secrets when it comes to your personnel file, brian
scott calls it a hallway file. If a manager needs to
understand what kind of a person he or she is getting
um in their field office. If a promotion board wants to
make sure before they elevate someone to a senior rank.
Uh the issues that should be handled with
confidentiality and not only between that officer and
his or her mental health support system will be made
available to those assignment and promotion boards. And
once one person knows it's not a secret anymore. We sat
down with the CIA's director of medical services wh
asked that we conceal her appearance and just use her
first name victoria. We are not immune to life. Life
happens to our folks just like everybody else. And so
we do see anxiety and depression in our workforce. Um
We also see um uh marital issues and um family pr
and family stressors. Sometimes this is related to what
we're asking our officers to do to move around to serve
in different parts of the world to be away from their
fam families for long periods of time. Some
intelligence officers say that they fear seeking any
kind of mental health support because they're scared
that it's going to jeopardize their career. Is the
any truth to that We definitely hear that we, you kn
we hear that and we very much are trying to address it.
And I would say, what's most likely to jeopardiz
someone's career is if they have an issue and they
don't seek out support and it gets worse and worse and
worse and then starts to impact their reliability,
their judgment and their stability. She says the stigma
around mental health issues has slowly been lifting.
Senior leader are sharing their own experiences both
with mental health struggles and with seeking out help
from our employee assistance program or other resources.
And that is really setting the culture and setting the
tone that yes, you can you can have a problem, address
the problem and still very much succeed in your career,
Janicki kate's first saw an agency therapist then got a
recommendation for a profession outside. What kind of
help worked for you. My therapist was able to help me
latch onto my logical brain and think through why am I
feeling this Where is this coming from Because I had
been trained for so long to to keep this facade of
nothing is wrong. Doug wise says he went through a 30
day treatment program followed by two years of
counseling and another year of monitoring. He says what
really helped him was never feeling judged, they're n
judgmental, they're not, you know, assessing whether
you're a good person or a bad person, you are just a
person with a disease of alcoholism. The combination
the agency's rehabilitative program and the loving
support of my wife allows me to do this interview today.
You know, you'd be talking to me you know in front of a
gravestone in Ireland is what should be doing.
Eventually he was able to return to every part of his
job. I ended up as the number two International
Intelligence Agency of the most powerful nation in the
history of the human race. That says a lot about the
intelligence community. It says a lot about the
rehabilitative program and yes it says a little bit
about me too and being able to recognize I had a
problem and be willing to do the hard work to get
through the program. Now the C.I.A. Provides mental
health services before officers deploy when they're in
a war zone. When psychologists embed with office
when they return this is also offered to officers when
they leave the agency, there is a newly formed grief
support group and a group for people struggling wit
alcohol or PTSD and Doug Wise says this is all a
counterintelligence priority be if the agency
can't take care of its intelligence officers. Then
other countries like Russia would certainly take
advantage of that chance.