A new law aims to address the mental health crisis among healthcare workers–but barriers to care persist

For our family, that change came suddenly. In April 2020, Dr. Lorna Breen, an accomplished NYC emergency room physician working on the frontlines of the first wave of COVID-19, died by suicide after treating the daily deluge of coronavirus patients she faced minute after minute, shift after shift.

Lorna, who had no history of mental illness, had grown overwhelmed by the unending surge of severely ill patients, not to mention being severely under-resourced and understaffed to treat them. As so many healthcare professionals can attest to today, she was...