Hey, just a heads up. This episode discusses suicide and mental health.

A tragic loss illustrating just how big an emotional toll this pandemic is taking on health care

workers. A couple weeks ago a New York doctor died by suicide. Lornabreen

worked in the emergency room at a hospital hit hard by COVID-19.

Her father telling the New York Times that the 49-year-old had contracted the virus but

recuperated.

He says the last time they spoke, described the onslaught of patients dying before they could be taken out of ambulances

We don't know why Dr. Breen took her own life, but the case highlighted the emotional strain of being a health care worker during the pandemic.

I think it shows that we need to take this very seriously.

Jen Schwartz is a senior features editor at Scientific American.

There's been such a focus on the physical consequences of COVID-19 and you know mental health is always less visible.

Physicians as a profession have one of the highest suicide rates in the country already and this just makes it so much more

intense and exposes so many cracks.

Today on the show around the, health care workers are having to make tough decisions with few resources,

and the emotional toll of the pandemic will stay with them, even when the virus is gone.

I'm Ariel Dim Ross.

This is reset.

In March and April, Jen Schwartz spoke to health care workers across the country

to try to get a sense of how the crisis was impacting their mental health.

The timing is important because this was that sort of span of deep uncertainty where each day felt like it just

went on forever and the changes from day to day were so extreme. One of the things I encountered a lot when talking to people who were not in hot spots at the time

was there was this sense of anticipatory stress, anticipatory stress.

...