Date
3-10-2026
Department
Helms School of Government
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration (PhD)
Chair
Stephanie Colón
Keywords
Mental health, public personnel management, staffing shortages, Navy, qualitative multiple case study, counselor, suicide, deployment, fleet and family support center, retention, public administration, policy, military, federal employee, overseas, ship, suicide ideation, job security, Maslow, Joiner, Llorens, FFSC, CNIC, DoD, DoN
Disciplines
Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
Recommended Citation
Turner, Shauna L., "The Perspectives of Mental Health Providers Concerning Public Personnel Management and Staffing Shortages in the Navy: A Qualitative Multiple-Case Study" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7965.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7965
Abstract
The federal government's public personnel management policies, established over a century ago, may now be ineffective in addressing twenty-first-century problems. The Navy faces an unprecedented global staffing shortage in the mental health career field. To address the problem, the Navy implemented human resource strategies to improve personnel quality of life and invested in improving service members' mental health. The problem is that the Navy’s existing personnel management policies may be ineffective at retaining clinical counselors at Fleet and Family Support Centers (FFSCs), contributing to persistent staffing shortages that undermine service delivery and warrant an evaluation of alternative retention strategies. This is concerning because staffing shortages may contribute to the sailors' limited access to mental health care services, which may pose a threat to public health. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to investigate and analyze mental health providers’ perspectives on how public personnel management policies and strategies influence retention at Navy FFSCs. A descriptive approach was used to investigate the phenomenon, utilizing both primary and secondary sources. The theoretical framework for this study included theories of public personnel management, human motivation, and the interpersonal psychological theory of suicide. The theories were complementary for assessing mental health providers' perceptions of the theoretical and policy factors relevant to human needs, interpersonal factors, and public personnel management policies that may influence the attrition. To collect data for this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with former Navy employees, selected through purposeful sampling. To ensure triangulation, document analysis and policy analysis were conducted to collect data.
