NYC doctor takes her own life after weeks on the frontlines of the pandemic

The woman was Dr. Lorna Breen, 49, and she is just one of a string of health care workers to have taken their own life recently.

“She tried to do her job, and it killed her,’’ said her father, Dr. Philip Breen, in an interview with The New York Times.

Dr. Lorna Breen was the medical director of the New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital during the outbreak.

Just two days before, an EMT from the Bronx shot himself using his retired father's old NYPD gun. John Mondello, 23, a rookie paramedic working out of EMS Station 18 where handles the highest volume in 911 calls in the city, they believe it was the result of what he'd seen at work.

Dr. Lorna Breen had been staying with her family in Charlottesville, Virginia, when she died, this past Sunday.

Dr. Philip Breen said she became sick from the virus while working and after a week and a half off to recovery, she returned to her position. The hospital decided to send her home again however, it was then that she travelled to Virginia to stay at with her family at their home.

Dr. Lorna Breen has no previous history of mental illness, according to her father. When they last spoke, she lamented her pain of seeing contagion patients dying, one after another, often before they could even been taken from the ambulance, he said. “She was truly in the trenches on the front line,’’ said Dr. Philip Breen. “Make sure she’s praised as a hero,’’ he added. “She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.’’

Mental health professionals are beginning to find that the pandemic is causing a great deal of PTSD in frontline health care workers.

“The group that is most at risk are the front-line health care workers," said Prof. Debra Kaysen, head of International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies at Stanford University.

The immense onslaught of patients can be overwhelming for almost anyone at times, said one ICU doctor who works in New York City. In the beginning, “it felt like we were standing under a waterfall and couldn’t get a breath for air,’’ she said. “Now it feels busy but not in a way that’s suffocating.

“I was in a really low place. But I feel hopeful that I’m starting to come out of it, finally.” she added, “It’s just very depressing because people in the ICU aren’t really coming out of it, and I don’t think my patients are going to live,’’

She confessed to having mixed feelings when it came to people applauding outside her hospital to show their support for health care workers amid the pandemic.

“The clappers make me cry whenever I hear them,’’ she said. “But also it’s weird—because none of us feel like heroes because we feel so defeated by this disease.”