EARLY RETIREMENT FOR OVERSEAS PERSONNEL - MEDICAL REQUIREMENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01826R000900090027-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 11, 2002
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: February 25, 1957
• Content Type: MF

Approved For Release 20x2/08/13 : Q:=090027-9
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Personnel
THROUGH : Chief, Medical Staff
SUBJECT : Early Retirement for Overseas Personnel - Medical
Requirements
1. Experience has shown that prolonged living in the foreign
environment involves certain health stresses which differ both quanti-
tatively and qualitatively from those experienced in the American setting.
From a physical point of view, these stresses may be climatic, nutritional,
toxic, infectious, or exhaustive in nature. Stresses of an emotional nature
arise from the chronic frustration of dependency and socializing needs of
employees and their families, and the inhibition of expressive modes of
dealing with affective impulses.
2. Employment overseas with this Agency is further characterized
by (a) the small size of our installations (b) their anonymity (c) the
isolating requirements of security. These factors frequently operate in
such a way as to expose our employees to certain more noxious situations,
and at the same time deprive them of defensive and adaptive supports that
otherwise might be available. This mode of existence requires of employees
a great degree of personal responsibility and self-determination. It
prevents them from identifying with, and belonging to, larger groups with
overt and accepted purposes. It causes them to live closer to the indige-
nous economy, its remote cultural patterns, and its sub-standard health
conditions.
3? The above-named stresses interact over a period of time with
specific vulnerabilities of individual employees in such a way as to
produce subtle but increasingly costly adaptational failures. These may
be occasioned by acute clinical illnesses, but more often they fall short
of the type of reaction of maladjustment that would warrant disability
retirement. They are subtle, but none the less pervasive. In some
instances this will produce a general acceleration of degenerative processes,
rendering the employee more brittle and sensitive to occupational strain.
In other instances it produces chronic and irreversible changes in the
personal and interpersonal emotional economy of the family, making it
less adaptive to new situations. The over-all effect is a loss of flexi-
bility and mobility of assignment, and a decrease in the tolerance for
situational stress. These occupational limitations, in turn, produce
their own frustrations for the individual, and there is a beginning down-
ward spiral of maladaptive reaction formations.
Approved For Release 2002/08/13 : CIA-RDP80-01826R
MS/PD/RBN:pdig