Medical workers tend to push through their mental health trauma. COVID-19 is changing that.

When Stony Brook University Hospital became inundated with coronavirus patients in March 2020, Kristen Hansen had only been working there for a couple of months. She soon began treating an overwhelming number of patients who were severely ill with the unfamiliar germ and moved into the basement of the house she shared with her parents and sister, so she could avoid putting her family at risk. She also feared for her own safety as she tried to make a single N-95 mask last for six weeks, she said.