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A movement to advocate for physician well-being is ongoing.

Physicians are notorious for minimizing their own mental health needs.

Stigma surrounding mental health treatment is ingrained within the medical community.

This month marks 5 years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Residents of New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak, experienced seismic life changes overnight. Our normal daily routines disappeared. Suddenly, we were under attack from a lurking and lethal coronavirus. Our lives were at stake simply by going grocery shopping or taking our children to school. Scenes at New York City hospital emergency departments were apocalyptic, overcrowded with patients gasping for air and dying.

As a physician, I wanted to jump in and do something. But what could a psychiatrist do when it seemed that what was needed was emergency medicine and critical care doctors? I read harrowing accounts largely of young doctors-in-training who were working nearly around the clock treating COVID-19 patients. They were overwhelmed and traumatized. Often they were isolated from their families due to concerns that they may have contracted COVID-19 and were contagious. Then I learned that Dr. Lorna Breen, the director of the Emergency Department at Columbia’s New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, had died by suicide. She herself had contracted COVID-19 and barely recovered before returning to treat more patients, without adequate staff or supplies. Her death sent shockwaves, devastation, and grief to her loving family and an already traumatized community of physicians.

Recognizing a........

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