N.Y. ER Doctor at Epicenter of COVID-19 Pandemic Dies by Suicide

MassLive.com, Springfield, Mass.

A Manhattan emergency room doctor who treated coronavirus patients, and survived the disease herself, died Sunday from suicide, the New York Times reported.

Dr. Lorna M. Breen, medical director of NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, took her life in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, according to her father and a spokesman for the local police department, the newspaper reported.

A police department spokesman revealed to the Times that on Sunday police responded to a call seeking medical assistance. Breen was rushed to U.V.A. Hospital for treatment, but succumbed to self-inflicted injuries.

Dr. Breen was 49-years old.

According to the Times, Dr. Breen had described scenes of the toll the coronavirus took on patients to her father Philip C. Breen, who is also a doctor.

“She tried to do her job, and it killed her,” her father told the Times.

The elder Dr. Breen told the Times his daughter had contracted the coronavirus but returned to work a week and a half later. She was then sent home by the hospital a second time and traveled to Charlottesville to stay with her sister.

Dr. Breen did not have a history of mental illness, according to her father. However, he revealed, when he last spoke with her he noticed that she seemed detached and something seemed wrong, he told the Times. She had described to him “an onslaught of patients who were dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances," he said.

“She was truly in the trenches of the front line,” he told the paper.

Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian described Dr. Breen as a “hero” in a statement issued Monday.

“Dr. Breen is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines of the emergency department,” the statement said. “Our focus today is to provide support to her family, friends and colleagues as they cope with this news during what is already an extraordinarily difficult time.”

Friends of Dr. Breen described her as avid skier and a deeply religious Christian who volunteered at a home for elderly once a week, the Times reported.

A colleague of Dr. Breen’s told the Times she was always looking out for others, making sure her doctors had protective equipment or anything else they needed.

NewYork Presbyterian-Allen, where Dr. Breen worked, had as many as 170 patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, at a time. And, as of April 7, there had been 59 patient deaths at the hospital, according to an internal document, the Times reported.