Employees of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the federal agency responsible for leading the nation’s response to the mental health and drug overdose crises, were among those terminated this morning in the latest round of mass firings implemented by the Trump administration.

Workers for SAMHSA and throughout the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) started receiving emailed termination notices starting at 5:30 a.m. this morning or were denied access to their offices and sent home, according to two employees who asked not to be identified.

The firings reportedly targeted SAMHSA officials across all regional offices and the agency’s headquarters and included senior officials including Robert Atanda, director of the division of management services, and Anita Everett, the director of its Center for Mental Health Services.

SAMHSA firings feel ‘rotten’

MindSite News took a detailed look at people fired from the agency in another story last week.

“It was a traumatic experience to watch people stand in line, to go through security, for nearly an hour, just to discover that they’re service to the country was terminated,” one SAMHSA employee told MindSite News in an email this morning. “It’s obvious this is meant to traumatize the workforce that’s in service to the country, but to do it in such a cruel and demoralizing way is unconscionable.”

It feels “rotten,” said another employee, who said that people came to work for SAMHSA out of a passion for doing important work that would better the lives of people in need.

“We all feel like we touched lives and improved access to services for mental health and substance for people all across America,” the employee said. “We implement grants that provide school-based mental health services, that address community violence.”

Historically, workers at SAMHSA had poor morale but that changed in recent years, current and former employees told MindSite News.

“We’ve made tremendous leaps and strides,” one employee said. “It’s phenomenal the workplace we built up to do what Congress has authorized us to do.”

Last week, HHS announced that the number of workers at the agency would be slashed from 82,000 to 62,000, a reduction of 20,000 employees and that SAMHSA would be reorganized within a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).

The cuts were needed, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in the statement, because the agency had become “wasteful and inefficient.” The layoffs and reorganization, he said, “will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves.”

One of the SAMHSA employees fired today had a different view, citing the agency’s expertise and role in administering contracts for mental health services.

“We are very involved in ensuring that grants are tied to research and are evidence-based,” the employee said. “Without what we were doing, our money would be an unaccountable passthrough, and no one wants that.”

‘Ready, fire, aim’

In the Senate, U.S. Sen. Corey Booker (D-New Jersey) protested the Trump administration’s firing of federal health workers in a marathon speech that began last night and as of 2 pm ET today, had lasted 19 hours. View Booker’s speech on YouTube.

“A lot of us who’ve run stuff know that that you don’t just fire people and then realize the mistake you’ve made and beg them to come back to work,” Booker said. “We know it’s ready, fire, aim – and actually the aim part never happens.”

Support for reporting on mental health policy issues is provided by the Commonwealth Fund.