Retaliation against whistleblowers and the role of restorative justice: a critical narrative

Through a critical narrative analysis, this paper explores the multiple factors associated with whistleblower mental health. Whistleblowing is a complex phenomenon within socioeconomic and sociopolitical organizations that uplifts a moral reflection of ethical or nefarious operational practices. When ethics are violated, the employee that stands at the precipice of protecting others from harm risks their own physiological security and psychological safety. Retaliation is an identifiable tactic with an observable nexus to the damage it causes the individual target(s). When peeling back the trajectory for a whistleblower, first is the propensity to act rather than stand by. There are several interconnected and disconnected factors to explore related to the motivation and perception of the employee versus the employer. However, if the employer is retaliatory, then the employee may suffer a mental health crisis that can result in a diagnosis or a death of despair.

However, since whistleblower mental health lacks a clear construct, taxonomy, and tools for intervention, it is not consistently or appropriately compensated or treated as a disability nor are its links to family disintegration or depreciated socioeconomic status. A hostile work environment is also associated with stress-related comorbidities and mortalities. To be made whole, whistleblowers or their surviving families need reparative, restorative and/or transitional justice from a moral community, but often they do not know how to find scarce resources.

In addressing these challenges and unjust conditions, this paper hopes to contribute to the body of knowledge germinating within the whistleblower protection community to add whistleblower mental health as a facet to the dais. I hope to address the objections to retaliation as a serious injury as a criterion for trauma and defend this position during judicial proceedings. Legally, animus and maltreatment are reasons for compensating for an injury to the psyche. I hope that by developing my standardized methodology through the Whistleblower Retaliation Checklist or a psychological autopsy that I can document liability for a disability and wrongful death.

Along with this reparative approach, there needs to be a restorative moral community that fosters reciprocal validation and resilience for the whistleblower. This would give them a sense of vindication when their cases settle so that they can move forward in their lives and not become negatively marked or stuck fighting in an Aggressive Hypervigilant Response mode. We need whistleblowers to become survivors so that they can teach others to Be a Giraffe and educate future generations to institutionalize salutogenic workplace cultures so that speaking up is never vilified.