Suicide rates among veterinarians are staggering. The crisis is dire – but there may be hope in sight.

Last summer, a 36-year-old veterinarian named Andrea Kelly stopped by a Québec horse stable to check on a pair of one-month-old foals, and had a friendly visit with the farm's staff. Three days later, she was dead. Kelly's death by suicide made headlines in Canada and elsewhere, sparking stories about the alarming mental health crisis in the veterinary community.

Kelly's death was well-publicised, also part of a grim pattern.

In 2021, 33-year-old Australian vet Sophie Putland died by suicide in Melbourne. Another Melbourne-based vet, Flynn Hargreaves, was just 27 when he took his life in 2018. In 2014, a Bronx, New York, veterinarian named Shirley Koshi died of an apparent suicide after months of being harassed and bullied by a pet owner. Later that same year, Sophia Yin, a pioneering animal behaviourist and renowned expert in the veterinary community, died by suicide at 48.

Between 1979 and 2015, according data from the US CDC National Center for Health Statistics, published in 2019, nearly 400 veterinarians died by suicide. The results showed male veterinarians are twice as likely and female veterinarians are close to four times as likely than the general population to die by suicide. Additionally, a study funded by pet food brand Royal Canin showed nearly 70% of veterinarians have had a colleague or peer die by suicide, and close to 60% have experienced work-related stress, anxiety or depression so severe it required professional help.

Researchers point to myriad causes fuelling the stark numbers around veterinarians' mental health crises. Financial factors play a part, as do the pressures and long hours of the job, expectations of pet owners and exposure to trauma and frequent euthanasia.

But the situation isn't hopeless: as the conversation around veterinarians' mental health gains traction, many practices have begun offering support and resources to their staff. Several have partnered with major suicide-prevention groups to try to make sure veterinary professionals and their colleagues know how to recognise warning signs before it's too late. 

'You're supposed to be in this to save animals, not kill them' 

Emily Volk is a veterinarian who works overnights in an emergency clinic in New Jersey, US. Most of the cases she treats are critical: animals who've been in accidents or are seriously ill. "It's a very constant stream of trauma," she says.

But, she adds, the stress is "exponentially amplified" by the involvement of owners' personal finances. In the US, pet owners in 2022 spent nearly $36bn (£29.5bn) at the vet, according to the American Pet Products Association. And prices for care have risen throughout the past few decades; between 2021 and 2022 alone, inflation drove up veterinary costs in the US by 10%. 

"A lot of the time when we're talking about what we need to do for someone's pet, all they're hearing is the incredible cost," says Volk. "You get accused of only being here for the money. A couple of weeks ago, someone called me a thief."

Very often, owners are unable to afford the treatments and surgeries to address their pets' ailments, which puts veterinarians in the difficult position of being medically able to help, but unable to administer care without fees. One of the most common criticisms veterinarians receive is that they're greedy. Doctors and staff are often asked to give discounts or waive fees, and owners can get upset when the answer is no. 

"People just don't understand; they don't get that it is a business," says Jess Feliciano, a veterinary technician at the same emergency practice as Volk. "They want to know why we can't make it cheaper, or just bill them. We have people tell us, 'You're supposed to be in this to save animals, not kill them.' It's heart-breaking because it's all fuelled by emotion. People just want somewhere to point their anger."

Taylor Miller, a veterinarian, mental health counsellor and board member of Not One More Vet (NOMV), an advocacy non-profit founded after the death of Dr Yin, says these financially driven conflicts can cause deeply distressing ethical dilemmas. A contributor to poor mental health, she says, "is moral distress: the idea that I cannot accomplish what my sole purpose should be, which is to care for an animal, because there are barriers to that care, one of the largest of which is financial".

Veterinarians often have their own money woes, too. Veterinary school is both extremely selective and extremely expensive, meaning vets also carry large debt loads relative to their earnings. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in 2022 that the median annual wage of a veterinarian in the US was just more than $100,000 (£82,000). Yet American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) reports the average debt for recent veterinary graduates who needed loans to pay for their education is $179,505 (£147,250). 

"A lot of us are in unbelievable amounts of debt," says Volk. "When I graduated in 2012, my personal student loan debt was at about $289,000. Despite a decade of payments, the total has increased because of interest, and right now it's at $460,000." Even if she wanted to stop being a veterinarian, she says she feels trapped: the sheer volume of sunk costs make transitioning to a new career feel close to impossible. 

"The math of being a veterinarian just does not work out," she says. "There's definitely a feeling that, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you're never getting out of that debt. And no matter how hard you work at your job, there's so many people that come to you for help and you can't help because of economic realities. You're always going to be failing somebody." 

'Oh wow, you really don't know what I do'

The work of a veterinarian is taxing, and the workload is made even heavier by a shortage of doctors. In the US, the American Animal Hospital Association reports a turnover rate near 25%, which means that, at any given time, one in four staff members are leaving their job. With just one applicant for every 10 open veterinary jobs, that leaves most clinics chronically understaffed.

"Caseloads are absolutely astronomical," says Feliciano. "There are times when I'm working 80-plus hours a week. The doctors are overloaded, too: I've seen nights when a single doctor sees 20 or more cases in a 10-hour shift."

In addition to working long hours for a paycheque that feels barely tenable, Feliciano says few people understand how emotionally taxing her job is. "The icing on the cake is we do so much, but get recognised for so little," she says. "I just recently had someone say, 'Oh, it must be nice to play with puppies all day!' And I'm like, oh wow, you really don't know what I do."

Veterinarians and their staff also deal with harassment and abuse from clients, both in person and online, in the form of negative reviews and even threats. A 2015 AVMA survey of about 350 US vets showed one in five either had been cyberbullied or knew a colleague who had been. 

Last year, a viral story about a puppy that was surrendered to Maine Veterinary Medical Center in Scarborough, Maine resulted in such intense online attacks and threats of violence that police had to be stationed outside the building.

The incident involved a four-month-old German Shepherd puppy who'd swallowed a skewer and needed emergency surgery life-saving surgery. The cost of the complicated procedure and after care was close to $10,000 – more than the owner could afford. As a last resort, to avoid euthanasia, the clinic offered her the option to surrender the puppy to a new owner who could cover the cost. When the former owner's story of attempting to get the puppy back aired on local television, it unleashed a "social media maelstrom", Maine Veterinary Medical Center wrote in a statement. They received "hourly threats to burn down the hospital and to kill our staff and their families. Our phone lines have been deliberately jammed so that real emergency calls cannot get through".

In response, NOMV organised a cyber-harassment task force to help practices avoid similar fallout. "This situation was unique to our practice, but it is not unique to the profession," said the clinic's statement. "Veterinary doctors are victims of threats and violence to such an extent that it is a national crisis." 

'We are seeing ourselves, emotionally, as hopeless cases'

In his book Regarding Animals, author Arnold Arluke discusses what he calls the "caring-killing paradox": doctors who devote themselves to treating pets – sometimes for the animals' whole lives – must also euthanise many of their patients.

"There are numerous times where we treat a really, really sick pet where the owners want to do everything, and we do so much to get that pet stabilised and then lose them in the end," says Feliciano. It's traumatic, she adds, and often leads to herself or her colleagues breaking down in tears. "It's a response to what we've just been through, but we also have to keep on trucking to the next one."

On occasion, says Feliciano, doctors and technicians are tasked with taking on even more of the emotional labour of euthanasia. "Not every owner can stay," she says. "They don't want to watch their pet take their last breath. They want to remember their good days and not this horrible day. And that's all understandable, but then it means they are going to leave that dog back there with me, saying goodbye and trying to distract them from looking around for the owners."

Other euthanasia circumstances are even more potentially traumatic for the doctors, says Miller. "When it comes to public health issues that impact our large animals, something like an outbreak of disease can mean veterinarians are responsible for slaughtering entire herds. Sometimes half the animals are healthy and normal, but for the good of the overall population, you know these healthy animals have to die. You understand it, but if you're the one making it happen, that's devastating."

More often, though, euthanasia feels like the just and merciful thing to do, says Volk, and it's far easier than watching an animal suffer.

But that reality of the job can also colour the way veterinarians view human lives – including their own – and for those already experiencing suicidal ideation, it can provide a simple justification: death is preferable to suffering. In a 2021 survey by pharmaceutical company Merck, 12.5% of the veterinarians surveyed said they were "suffering". And nearly half of the respondents were not receiving mental health care.

"There's an idea that veterinarians work on the belief that it's right to euthanise a hopeless case," says Volk, "and we are seeing ourselves, emotionally, as hopeless cases."

Death is a routine and repeated part of the job, and while it's never easy to end a life, Volk adds that it is easy to start seeing it as an option to alleviate their own distress. "I have medications in my clinic that are called 'Euthasol', and I euthanise all the time," she says. "Literally like five or six times a night."

The CDC's 2019 study identified poisoning as the most common cause of death among veterinarians. The primary drug used was pentobarbital, one of the main medications used for animal euthanasia. The study’s authors determined that "training on euthanasia procedures and access to pentobarbital are some of the key factors contributing to the problem of suicide among veterinarians".

'Creating a place where it is safe to be imperfect' 

The response to the stark statistics around veterinary suicide and mental health has been robust. 

In autumn 2021, the AVMA held a roundtable discussion – the first of its kind – to address suicide prevention. The organisation now offers a host of resources, including a free course known as "gatekeeper training" to teach veterinary professionals who don't have a mental health background to recognise when their colleagues might be at risk.

Banfield Pet Hospital, the largest privately owned veterinary practice in the United States, operates more than 1,000 clinics inside PetSmart stores. In 2020, the company launched a training and awareness program to teach its thousands of employees to recognise warning signs, such as isolating or withdrawing behaviours, depressed, anxious, or agitated moods, giving away possessions or talking about suicide.

On social media, several groups aim to help veterinary professionals find solace among colleagues who get it. A NOMV program called Lifeboat provides online, anonymous peer-to-peer support.

"It's anonymous so that you can feel safe talking about mistakes you've made – the things that haunt your dreams – without having to feel like they know who you are and now, they won't refer to your hospital," says Miller. "Making mistakes is not safe in medicine. It's not safe to be imperfect. The goal with Lifeboat is creating a place where it is safe to be imperfect for a little bit, so you can work through it."

Veterinary suicides continue to generate headlines and stories about the pressures of the profession, but that visibility may be helping increase openness around the topic. Volk says the subject of emotional health comes up more than ever among her staff and colleagues. "I think I know what anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds everyone around me is on," she says. Volk also works diligently to make sure young doctors new to the profession are paying as much attention to their own well-being as their patients'.

"I am in a position of mentorship for the interns in our practice that are new grads, in their first year out of school," she says. "I do a lot of coaching with them about how to take care of themselves, too."