A government psychologist who was officially reprimanded for alerting his superiors to widespread child abuse on a North Dakota Indian reservation has had his punishment rescinded, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday.

The psychologist, Michael R. Tilus, director of behavioral health at the Spirit Lake Health Center on the Spirit Lake Reservation, said he had been acting as a whistle-blower when he e-mailed letters to senior federal health officials, law enforcement agents and North Dakota’s United States senators about what he described as an “epidemic” of child abuse at Spirit Lake and the lack of effort by the tribe’s leaders to address the problem.

Days after portions of his e-mails appeared in The New York Times, Dr. Tilus was issued a letter of reprimand. A scheduled promotion was rescinded, and he was transferred to a regional headquarters in South Dakota.

In the reprimand letter, which was obtained by The Times, Dr. Candelaria Martin, the department’s clinical director of medical staff at Spirit Lake, said Dr. Tilus’s dissemination of the e-mail to health and law enforcement officers outside his chain of command constituted “engaging in action and behavior of a dishonorable nature.”