mental health in veterinary

So today I will be scanning the surface to this topic. I feel it's a very important topic and over the past year and a bit of reading veterinary news I have seen it pop up quite a lot.

When people ask me why do I want to be a vet my answer is often because I can't see myself doing anything else. When vets ask me this question they often say are you sure? from reading the news I can understand why they say this, in the past I have heard it said that veterinarians have the highest suicide rate of any profession alone with dentists I think.

This lead me to question what is it that drives vets to this point and why aren't measures being taken to reduce these stats. One of the major factors in poor mental health in the veterinary practice is the pressure and long working hours. All vets main aim is to make our animals better again and do the best they can to improve the animals wellbeing and quality of life. this put enormous pressure on vets who feel they always have to do their best as people are relying on them. this can lead to a downward spiral in mental health because you can become tired and depressed thinking about all the 'what ifs'. I understand that now more is being done to help vets not fall down this spiral, there are charities and helplines that a being promoted for vets and their colleges to contact if they feel they need to.

To alleviate the stresses of the work day I feel that vets should try to take part in sporting activities or a recreational club to take their minds off their work. For me this will be imperative, I have gone through hard times at school where the only thing keeping me sane was my sport, yes I maybe spread myself a bit thin but I believe that if it weren't for my sport I would have had a bout of depression or a breakdown. I get that this could be tough for a vet as the working hours are extremely long and then you can add on the out of hours work and any on call days. But it doesn't make having some down time any less important. Even if all it is, is cooking a nice meal for your family or loved ones are sitting in front of the TV watching a good film all of these are important things to do to wind down. Personally was I was going through a rough patch I started meditating just 10 mins every day just allows you to distance yourself from the world and focus on what really matters.

I know that money is often a worry vets aren't paid as much nowadays, and what with paying off student loans ( which vet students have a lot of) you also want to be buying a nice house and paying the mortgage, when the low salary isn't in keeping with the cost of living and the comparison to other professionals. Due to the low salaries vets can experience low self esteem a newly qualified vet may be paid around £15/ hour the national living wage is £8.20 an hour and these highly trained professionals working long hours and unsociable hours aren't even being paid double that.
 To quote the 2015 SPVS Salaries Survey: “An 11 to 15-year qualified vet, for example, expecting to earn £44,194 to £65,217 (median £48,750) compared to £55,412 to £83,617 for doctors, and £55,000 to £110,00 for dentists… no further progress in closing the gender pay gap in the profession, which remains stubbornly at 16.7% for full time salaries and up at 15.8% for hourly rates.”
I believe that this is just wrong vets are trained professionals. However money isn't of huge importance to me at least not yet, no matter what vets are paid I will still want to be a vet I just feel it's a bit unjust.

So just to finish off I think that if we could educate our vets more maybe when they are in university about this problem and teach them how to deal with problems as well as advertise the charities more and promote recreational activities we could aid this problem, we will never be able to end the problem but at least if we could gain some control over it, we would be in a better place than we are now. I know not everyone will agree with what I've written and I'm sorry if it offends you. But please if you are reading this and you feel you do have some mental health issue, talk to people about it likelihood is they have experienced the same thing before. Also just tell people around you how much you appreciate them and smile it will make your day better. Thank you for reading.

my facts were taken from a veterinary times article.