Studies of past outbreaks reveal a toll on health care workers. During the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2003, 89% of 271 health care workers in Hong Kong reported negative psychological effects, including exhaustion and fear of social contact. And for up to 2 years after the epidemic dwindled, health care workers in Toronto, another city hit hard by SARS, had significantly higher than normal levels of burnout, psychological distress, and post-traumatic stress.

Those data come as no surprise to Srijan Sen, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He began a project monitoring the mental health of medical residents in Shanghai before the outbreak and found that 385 newly minted doctors at 12 hospitals reported average “mood scores” of 7.5 out of a scale of 10. When the virus struck, he could see its impact: One month after the virus started its march through China, that score had dropped to 6.5, and self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety shot up significantly. That’s a strong contrast to last year’s cohort of young physicians, whose average mood score rose up to eight by the Chinese New Year. Those unpublished results suggest China’s doctors are facing a significant psychological burden, Sen says. “It’s stark how high the rates of anxiety, depression, distress [are], particularly in Wuhan.”

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