Rosalyn “Roz” Beroza, MSW ’78, founded Therapy4Feds, a volunteer network offering free mental health care to federal workers impacted by 2025’s sweeping agency layoffs.
When thousands of federal employees lost their jobs in early 2025 due to sweeping agency cuts, University of Maryland School of Social Work (UMSSW) alumna Rosalyn “Roz” Beroza, MSW ’78, LCSW-C, saw more than an employment crisis. She saw a looming mental-health emergency — and she stepped in to meet it.
A clinician of more than 40 years, Beroza founded Therapy4Feds (therapy4feds.org), a volunteer network offering free or low-cost mental-health treatment to federal workers who have lost their jobs and were harmed by recent upheaval in government service. What began with a small circle of clinicians rapidly expanded into a national effort.
For Beroza, the work is deeply personal and reflects a lifelong commitment to public service. Her admiration for federal employees was shaped early by her late father who became a scientist after years of night school, eventually earning a PhD and realizing his dream of working for the government.
“For him, a government job was sacred,” Beroza recalled. “He valued the security government jobs offered at that time, but even more, he felt working for the government was a privilege where he would be contributing to the welfare of this country.”
That early message stayed with her, and it grew into a family-wide calling. Social work has long been central to Beroza’s household: Roz and her husband met while attending the University of Maryland School of Social Work, both graduating in 1978. Dr. Roger Friedman, Roz’s husband, was an award-winning adjunct faculty member at the school for 19 years. And two of Roz's and Roger’s children, Michaela Friedman, MSW ’15, and David Friedman, MSW ’20, are also UMSSW graduates. Their shared commitment to service and healing has shaped the way the family engages with the world.
Against that backdrop, Beroza found it especially painful to watch federal workers — some of them her own neighbors in Montgomery County, Md. — face public hostility in recent years. As a trauma-focused therapist, she recognized the long-term consequences of sudden unemployment, targeting, and the loss of professional identity for thousands of federal employees, many living across the National Capital Region.
“Trauma draws a line through your life, and everything after that line is different,” she explained. “Federal employees who have been devalued, scapegoated, or publicly maligned are living with those invisible scars, and the support they need simply does not exist in the system.”
Since early 2025, various news articles, online forums, and grassroots efforts have helped spread awareness of Beroza’s efforts and amplify her call for volunteer clinicians. However, because the need is massive and by year’s end, 300,000 federal employees will have lost their jobs, Beroza continues to urgently need licensed mental health practitioners to join the Therapy4Feds’ network of providers.
“I started this as a volunteer effort because these workers had nowhere else to go,” she said. “The emails we received describing the loss of decades of service were heartbreaking. These are people who dedicated their lives to public service, and sadly now they feel abandoned.”
Without external funding or institutional support, Beroza is still funding the effort herself. She hopes to find a nonprofit sponsor so that Therapy4Feds can begin to accept tax-deductible donations.
Beroza is thrilled that Therapy4Feds and Give an Hour, a nonprofit that began after the Sept. 11 tragedy, have recently joined together to support each other’s missions to provide free therapy for underserved populations. Give an Hour serves the military, victims of financial fraud, and those with rare diseases. It has developed a nationally board-approved, Social Work, Psychology and Counselor CEU program, which is free to their network of providers. Now Give an Hour is extending the opportunity to earn free CEU credits to clinicians registering with the Therapy4Feds network of providers.
Even as national attention on this effort has waned, demand for support remains high. Through it all, Beroza returns to the values that have defined her career and her family: dignity, justice, and helping to support communities through their challenges.
“Federal workers have given so much to all American citizens,” she said. “Now it’s our time to give back to them."
Licensed mental health providers interested in learning more or registering with Therapy4Feds and former federal employees seeking support, please contact therapy4feds.org.