Mental Health Care and Your Florida Medical License

Picture a hospitalist in Orlando who has slept four hours a night since March. She has administered the PHQ-9 several hundred times and she knows what her own score would be. She has not made an appointment, and the reason is a sentence she heard as a third-year resident: anything you tell a psychiatrist will end up on your license application.

That sentence is wrong in Florida, and it has been wrong for years. The belief still keeps physicians out of treatment, so it is worth reading the actual forms and the actual statute.

What the Florida Application Asks

The Florida Board of Medicine’s licensure application, form DH-MQA 1000, contains two health history questions. The first reads: “During the last two years, have you been treated for or had a recurrence of a diagnosed physical or mental disorder that impaired or impairs your ability to practice?” The second asks the same thing about “a diagnosed substance-related (alcohol or drug) disorder” over the last five years. The Board of Osteopathic Medicine’s form, DH-MQA 1029, uses the same two questions, and so does the MOBILE endorsement application that was revised in August 2025.

Both questions turn on impairment. Neither asks whether you have ever received a diagnosis, taken an antidepressant, or seen a therapist. The form says so in its own introduction: “Seeking assistance with stress, mild anxiety, situational depression, family or marital issues will not adversely affect the outcome of a Florida health care practitioner application.” It adds that the board and the department view “effective treatment by a licensed professional as enhancing the applicant’s ability to meet the eligibility requirements to practice a health care profession.”

Why the Fear Persists

In 2017 Liselotte Dyrbye, M.D., and colleagues at Mayo Clinic surveyed more than 5,800 physicians and reported in Mayo Clinic Proceedings that nearly 40 percent would hesitate to seek professional help for a mental health condition because of concerns about their license. Only about one-third of state applications at the time limited their questions to current conditions that affect practice, and physicians in the remaining states were 21 percent more likely to say they would be reluctant to seek help.

The Federation of State Medical Boards responded in April 2018 with a workgroup report on physician wellness and burnout. It told member boards to ask about current impairment, to limit any historical question to two years or less, and to offer “safe haven non-reporting” to physicians who are in good standing with a physician health program. The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, named for the New York emergency physician who died by suicide in April 2020, now audits applications against those standards. It counted 46 medical licensure boards as consistent with them as of September 25, 2026.

A study by Hirsh Makhija and colleagues in JAMA Psychiatry in February 2025 examined 448 physician suicides recorded in the National Violent Death Reporting System from 2017 through 2021. Female physicians had a suicide risk 53 percent higher than women who were not physicians, while male physicians had a risk 16 percent lower than other men. Physicians who died were more likely than nonphysicians to have had a mental health problem, a job problem, or a legal problem beforehand.

The Board’s Side of the Question

The regulator’s position deserves a full hearing. The Legislature created the boards to protect patients, and a board that never asked about impairment would be failing at that task. Most of us have worked beside a colleague whose illness or drinking did reach the bedside.

The defensible line is between having an illness and being impaired by one, and that is the line Florida’s form draws. The one place the form goes further than the Federation recommends is the substance-use question, which looks back five years where the Federation asks for two years or less. It is reasonable for physicians to ask the boards to shorten it.

How the Professionals Resource Network Fits In

Section 456.076 of the Florida Statutes governs impaired practitioner programs. The Professionals Resource Network, a nonprofit based in Fernandina Beach, is one of the two programs designated by the state, and the other serves nurses. The statute defines impairment to include “a mental or physical condition that could affect a practitioner’s ability to practice with skill and safety.”

A physician can self-refer. When one does, the statute says the consultant “may not provide information to the department relating to a self-referring participant” so long as the consultant knows of no pending investigation, complaint, or disciplinary action and the participant “is in compliance and making progress.” The impairment itself is not grounds for discipline if the practitioner acknowledges it, enters the program, and completes the participant contract.

The protection has limits, and physicians should know them before they call. If a participant is terminated for material noncompliance, or for any reason other than completion, the consultant must give the department all of the information in its possession. The same disclosure is required when the consultant concludes that the impairment “constitutes an immediate, serious danger to the public health, safety, or welfare.”

For most physicians with depression, anxiety, or insomnia that has not impaired their practice, PRN is not the first stop. An ordinary appointment with a psychiatrist or psychologist is, and the licensure form does not ask about that appointment unless the condition impaired your ability to practice.

What Florida Physicians Should Do

1. Read the two health history questions yourself on the Board of Medicine or Board of Osteopathic Medicine website, so that your decision about treatment rests on the text and not on what you heard in residency.
2. Make the appointment you have been postponing.
3. Answer licensure, credentialing, and insurance applications truthfully and exactly as they are worded. None of this constitutes legal advice, so if you are unsure whether a past episode counts as impairment, have a Florida health law attorney read the question with you before you answer it.
4. Request your hospital’s credentialing and reappointment forms. Hospital and payer applications are written separately from the state’s, and the Lorna Breen foundation audits them for the same reason it audits licensure forms. Ask your medical staff office to compare its questions with the Federation’s 2018 recommendations.
5. If alcohol, drugs, or an illness is affecting your work, call PRN at 800-888-8776 before someone else files a complaint, because the statute’s non-reporting protection applies to the participant who self-refers while no investigation is pending. Then bring the five-year look-back to your county medical society and the Florida Medical Association as a change worth requesting.

If you are in crisis tonight, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline answers calls and texts at any hour.

The Bigger Picture

We tell patients every day that a treated illness is safer than an untreated one. For a generation the profession taught its own trainees the opposite about themselves, and the application forms in many states gave them reason to believe it. Florida’s forms no longer do. The remaining work belongs to us. We can correct the old rule when a resident repeats it, we can ask our hospitals to fix the forms that still ask about treatment history, and we can regard a colleague’s decision to get care as a professional act.

For more on licensure in Florida, see our coverage of off-duty speech and a Florida license, Florida CME requirements and Florida NP and PA supervision requirements. All of our reporting on this subject is collected in our guide to Florida scope of practice and medical regulation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to report therapy or psychiatric treatment on a Florida medical license application?

Not unless the condition impaired your practice. The Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine applications ask whether, in the last two years, you were treated for a diagnosed physical or mental disorder “that impaired or impairs your ability to practice.” The form states that seeking help for stress, mild anxiety, situational depression, or family issues will not adversely affect the application.

Will the Florida Department of Health be told if I contact PRN on my own?

Under section 456.076, the consultant may not give the department information about a self-referring participant when it knows of no pending investigation, complaint, or disciplinary action and the participant is in compliance and making progress. The consultant must disclose its file if the participant is terminated without completing the program or is found to be an immediate, serious danger to the public.

What is the Professionals Resource Network in Florida?

PRN is a private nonprofit that serves as one of Florida’s two designated impaired practitioner programs. It does not provide treatment. It arranges evaluations and monitors physicians and other licensed professionals whose substance use or mental or physical condition could affect safe practice.

Do hospital credentialing forms ask the same mental health questions as the Florida license application?

Not necessarily. Hospitals, health plans, and insurers write their own applications, and their questions can be broader than the state’s. Read each form as it is worded, and ask your medical staff office whether its questions have been reviewed against the Federation of State Medical Boards’ 2018 recommendations.

This article is general information for physicians and is not legal or medical advice for any individual. Application forms and statutes change, so read the current versions before you rely on them.

This article was drafted with the assistance of AI writing tools, then reviewed, edited, and approved by Dr. Sean C. Orr, M.D., who holds full editorial responsibility for its content. The header illustration was created with AI image tools.

References

1. Florida Board of Medicine, Medical Doctor licensure application, form DH-MQA 1000, Health History section. flboardofmedicine.gov
2. Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine, Osteopathic Physician full licensure application, form DH-MQA 1029 (revised 5/2022). floridasosteopathicmedicine.gov
3. Florida Board of Medicine, Mobile Opportunity by Interstate Licensure Endorsement application, form DH-MQA-5103 (revised 8/2025). flboardofmedicine.gov
4. Florida Statutes, section 456.076, “Impaired practitioner programs” (2026). flsenate.gov
5. Professionals Resource Network, Inc. flprn.org
6. Dyrbye LN, West CP, Sinsky CA, Goeders LE, Satele DV, Shanafelt TD. Medical Licensure Questions and Physician Reluctance to Seek Care for Mental Health Conditions. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2017;92(10):1486-1493. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
7. Mayo Clinic News Network, “Physician licensing laws keep doctors from seeking care” (October 2, 2017). newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org
8. Federation of State Medical Boards, Report and Recommendations of the FSMB Workgroup on Physician Wellness and Burnout (adopted April 2018). Journal of Medical Regulation. 2018;104(2):37. jmronline.org
9. Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, “Improving Licensure & Credentialing Applications.” drlornabreen.org
10. Makhija H, et al. Female Physician Suicide Compared to the General Population. JAMA Psychiatry. Published February 26, 2025. jamanetwork.com
11. American Psychiatric Association, Psychiatric News Alert, summary of Makhija et al. on physician suicide risk (February 2025). alert.psychnews.org