'She was killed by work': an ambulance doctor committed suicide in New York

A Manhattan ambulance doctor committed suicide. She was shocked by the way the virus kills patients. She was one of New York’s leading doctors in the fight against COVID-19 and worked at the forefront. This publication reports New York Post.

Doctor Lorna Bryn was the head of the emergency department at Allen's New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Before committing suicide, she spent several days at the forefront of the fight against coronavirus, her family members said on April 27.

“She tried to do her job and it killed her,” said Dr. Philip Breen, the victim's father.

Lorna died on Sunday, April 26, in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she stayed with her family.

Philip Breen said his daughter contracted the virus while working. After a week and a half, she recovered and returned to work. However, she was sent home again from the hospital, after which her family brought her to Virginia.

She had no mental illness, he said. But when they talked for the last time, her daughter told him how painful it was to constantly watch how those who were infected die.

“She really was in the trenches on the front line,” said Philip Breen. “She must be honored as a hero. She died just like everyone else. "

Exhausted by the fight against the coronavirus, 49-year-old Lorna was just one of several suicides among city health workers in recent times. Two days earlier, a Bronx ambulance doctor who witnessed the devastating power of the coronavirus shot himself with a pistol belonging to his father, a retired New York police officer. Paramedic John Mondello, 23, worked at EMS 18 in the Bronx, which handles the massive number of 911 calls.

On the subject: How a New York doctor himself turned out to be a patient infected with COVID-19

Psychiatrists have explained that post-traumatic stress disorder caused by a pandemic becomes a very real crisis.

“The group that is most at risk are frontline health workers and bereaved people,” said Stanford University professor Debra Keissen, leader of the International Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress in School.

A city-based intensive care unit doctor said on April 27 that it might sometimes be impossible to cope with the onslaught of patients with COVID-19.

“For a while, I felt like I was standing under a waterfall and couldn't breathe,” she said. - Now this sensation is strong, but not enough to suffocate. I was at the bottom. But I feel hope that I am finally starting to get out of this. "

Nevertheless, the current situation depresses her very much. She believes that some of the people in the intensive care unit - her patients - will not be able to survive.

The doctor also admitted that she has mixed feelings for people who applaud health workers on the streets or glorify them during a pandemic.

“Cheers make me cry whenever I hear them,” she said. - It's also weird. None of us feel like a hero, we feel defeated by this disease. "

The phone number of the National Suicide Prevention Line is 1-800-273-8255.

As previously wrote ForumDaily New York:

• New York - at the first place in the world by the number of coronavirus infected.
• However, in New York plan to cancel quarantine and start testing for COVID-19 in pharmacies.
• All public events in New York canceled before the end of June.
• At the same time, appeared New York return plan to normal life.
• Recently held in New York antibody testing revealed: nearly three million state residents could be carriers of the coronavirus.