Veterinarians and suicide

I was in my vet's waiting room one time and witnessed a family arguing over how much to spend on their dog who had been hit by a car. The dog needed surgery and ole boy was having none of it. His wife was alternately crying and arguing with him and the youngins were wailing. Vet finally agreed to splint the leg and hope for the best. An MD gets paid more and doesn't have to contend with that.

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It's clear that newspaper is trying to equate student loan debt with suicide when there's no direct evidence of that

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I didn't understand that either. Every advanced degree costs lots of money.

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.

When I think of suicide and vets being connected, the last thing I'm thinking of is student loans

I'm thinking of the constant death and grieving families.

I worked at a vet years ago and thankfully I was in the hospital part. I couldn't handle the exam rooms with the families

Working in any healthcare environment is stressing, whether it be for humans or pets.

My best friend is a veterinarian and she is one of the most compassionate people I know. There are days she breaks down to me over her work whether it be a pet she loses, or a pet owner who won't pay for a diagnostic test but will treat her like shite when she can't answer their questions or treat their pet. She said most days she feels like a punching bag.

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This little tidbit is a bit dramatic.

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If you're talking about the amount, I can see it being that high depending on the circumstances. We helped her with lodging by purchasing a 3/2 trailer and placing it in a nice park not far from the LSU campus because it was cheaper than having her in an apartment. Those were going for $900 a month for a one bedroom. She lived as cheap as possible so she was able to reject the last installment of her loan by the time she was graduating and she still was in the $140,000 range. And that is staying in state. If she had gone to Texas A&M, she said that the debt would have been a lot higher because of the out of state tuition cost that is factored in. She did defer it for 6 months after graduating and thank God she has a great job and doing well to make the payments.

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I worked at a vet years ago and thankfully I was in the hospital part. I couldn't handle the exam rooms with the families

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A cousin wanted to be a Vet since she was a little girl. She was in college on track for Vet school while working part time at a veterinary clinic. She recently decided she no longer wanted to be a Vet after dealing with the constant sadness at the clinic. She now wants to be an Occupational Therapist.

She equated Vets to dentists. A lot of people don’t go to the dentist until something is wrong. Vets are the same way. The difference is a root canal is a common outcome when someone is forced to go to the dentist. Euthanasia is the diagnosis a lot of times at the Vet.

What's the correlation between this and me having to pay $1000 for getting little Dexter's paws trimmed?

Being a vet would be a very emotional job I think. Giving shots to puppies, etc would be just so much fun, but dealing with terribly injured pets and the families would be stressful.