re: Veterinarians and suicide

Those are similar to other numbers I have seen. The rate is similar to medical doctors and dentists. Financial pressures are worse for veterinarians than those two groups given DVMs have lower average salaries but veterinarians accumulate a lot of debt going through undergraduate and then doctoral four year programs.

Parsing out the reasons for individual behavior is a risky business especially because people who actually kill themselves may be different from some of those who "attempt" suicide (more as an attempt to get attention and support that they need) whereas people who successfully kill themselves are not necessarily seeking help or attention so much as trying to just end a life they don't enjoy.

Anyway, having worked in small animal private practice for a few years there are definitely a lot of stressors that people dump on your lap and we don't really have easy fixes for some of those things.

Pet insurance is not a widely used enough to spread out financial risk and dilute costs over time - so many people in the position of having to pay large sums for emergency care or significant supportive care for aging or ill patients have no good recourse to provide care - and that emotional pressure those owners may pass on to you can really crush your ability to feel good about your job. Even the clients who understand you didn't make their pet sick or medicines and medical devices expensive are still going to go through a normal grieving process that is going to scar you unless you have a bit of sociopathic immunity.