Suicide Reverberates Among Young Doctors

Suicide Reverberates Among Young Doctors

Dr. Nakita Mortimer had advocated for better working conditions for medical residents

By Jennifer Calfas, WSJ

April 26, 2025 12:00 pm ET

Dr. Nakita Mortimer was always a leader. The first of four children to move to the U.S. from Haiti for college in 2012, she was a guiding light for each sibling as they followed her.

In her medical residency in anesthesiology at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, she helped organize a union for residents. She wanted relief from the punishing hours and pressure that challenge even the high achievers who become young doctors.

“The fact that the medical profession has one of the highest rates of burnout and suicide, compared to other professions, speaks to the urgent need for change,” Mortimer told The City, a local news site, in November 2022.

Months later, she died by suicide. Her death was a reckoning for her peers as many young doctors are pushing for more mental-health support and improvements to their working conditions.

“The fact that I never thought that it could be her means that it can be any of us,” said Dr. Jhori Hodges, a medical-school classmate. “Nakita has always had a fire.”

The end of a young life with so much promise amplifies suicide’s universal tragedy. Any individual suicide’s cause is, finally, unknowable. But a number of suicides among medical residents have fueled calls for hospitals and regulators to better support young doctors who say their well-being is at risk.

Nearly a quarter of residents have considered self-harm, and a fifth know a peer or colleague who has considered suicide in the past year, according to a 2024 survey by the Physicians Foundation, an advocacy group.

Current and former residents said they hesitated to ask for help or use mental-health resources for fear superiors would consider them unfit for the high-stress profession. Some said they had suicidal thoughts for the first time during residency.

The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, named after a New York emergency room director who died by suicide in 2020, has helped push 34 state medical boards and more than 500 hospitals to remove questions about mental-health history from doctor licensing and credentialing applications.

“There’s a minefield of institutionalized stigma,” said Corey Feist, Breen’s brother-in-law and co-founder of the foundation.

Older doctors and hospital administrators consider residency’s trials a vocational rite of passage. After medical school, doctors are expected to work 80-hour weeks and shifts of up to 28 hours for several years to earn board certification.

The relentless schedule can drive depression, burnout and suicidal risk, said Dr. Srijan Sen at the University of Michigan. His research documented a fivefold increase in rates of depression during the first year of residency compared with the end of medical school.

Other professions including banking and law demand relentless commitment of young people lured by big salaries. In those fields, relatively high pay starts right away. First-year residents made an average of $67,000 in 2024 while carrying an average of $200,000 in debt.

Families of residents who have died or attempted suicide say the system puts too much strain on young doctors. “It’s incumbent upon us to completely change the way we look at mental illness in our profession,” said Dr. Richard Boulay, a gynecologic-oncologist whose daughter attempted suicide during general-surgery residency in 2021.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires programs to provide residents with confidential mental-health services, encourage them to report concerns and allow time off for illness, family emergencies, medical appointments and parental leave.

ACGME is assessing how to ensure residents can report poor working conditions without fear of retribution, said Chief Accreditation Officer Dr. Mary Klingensmith. “We do not want it to be that residents feel hindered in any way from speaking their truth,” Klingensmith said.

Nakita Mortimer’s death shook her fellow residents at Montefiore.

“We could all kind of see ourselves in her,” said Dr. Jessica Mitter, a first-year resident when Mortimer died. The program’s union, which Mortimer helped organize, in March approved its first contract including an 18% salary increase.

Montefiore offers mental-health support including check-ins with first-year residents. “It was clear she was an exceptional leader and compassionate physician dedicated to making positive change for all,” Montefiore’s anesthesiology department wrote on X after her death.

In medical school, Mortimer belonged to a group called White Coats for Black Lives. Her classmates admired her willingness to raise concerns with superiors and her reliability as a friend. Scattered around the country as residents, Mortimer and her classmates stayed in touch in group chats and convened in one of their new homes when they could.

Dr. Rehema Thomas, a friend from medical school completing residency at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, spent time with Mortimer in New York when Thomas interned there in 2022-23.

Mortimer and Thomas coordinated their schedules to make slivers of time to go dancing to Afrobeats and Caribbean music.

“She was just very lighthearted, but also had a lot of depth to her,” Thomas said.

Mortimer’s sister, Sarahdjane Mortimer, said the family heard from her less often after she started residency. She missed weekly calls with her siblings, and followed up after rotations or catching some intermittent sleep.

In May 2023, she missed a flight to Sarahdjane’s graduation from Harvard’s School of Design. The family asked Montefiore staff to check her apartment in resident housing, where Sarahdjane said they found Nakita asleep.

“You’re tired from your rotation,” her parents told her on a video call. “We understand if you can’t make it.”

Nakita texted her sister congratulations on her graduation.

“Within about 24 hours, we lost her,” Sarahdjane said.