[candybar]

We can talk about other negative aspects of being a vet, but the primary factor is that they know how:

> 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".

What often stops otherwise suicidal folks is that it's not an easy thing to do - suicide attempts usually do not lead to deaths (https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/psychiatry-... - 5.4% according to one study, and the denominator here is # of people. not # of attempts). Vets on the other hand are trained to put down animals painlessly and effectively - it's not a surprise that those that have the means to complete suicide and have plenty of experience applying this to other animals then die disproportionately from suicide.

[oooyay]

I was lucky enough to own a house next to the vet clinic that ended up being my first dogs final veterinarian. Her sickness was very gradual; a boil grew on her neck and started aspirating blood, she became anemic, and somewhat lethargic. I supplemented her diet as the vet walked me through everything I could possibly do and was willing to afford. She gave me her number to text when weird things happened with the caveat that "the time" was when she wouldn't eat for three days. That day came after her 10th birthday, around Christmas time. I laid there in a room they had prepared and cried a lot with her. When the vet came in she cried as they delivered Euthasol. It was over in seconds and everyone in the room just cried for a while, people slowly left and they told me I could have as much time as I needed.

I cannot imagine doing that six times a day. You're not only having to watch a creature die, a creature whose personality you've observed, one that you've fostered good health in, but you often have to walk the human through delivering something out of this world. Being there with someone or something as they exit this plane is one of the most arduous journeys you can take, imo. I can understand the toll this must take after some time, when you relate to and see yourself in your patients - whether animal or human.

[heyoni]

I think one of the worst things about society right now is we don’t share the burden amongst ourselves. The dirty work so to speak is delegated to specialists and our hands stay completely clean. I’m not saying pet owners should euthanize their animals but staying there in the room while the vet did their work probably helped, and the article mentions that owners leaving is part of the problem.

[crmd]

The worst day of my life was a few years ago when I had to put down my greyhound. I will never forget opening the door to the examination room, beside myself in grief bawling my eyes out, and stepping into the waiting room full of horrified people. And then going up to the desk to pay and trying to keep my shit together. I felt so sad and vulnerable it was just awful.

[julianeon]

I'm curious, since you mentioned this, and I've never really understood the alternative to euthanasia.

Your vet said to take the dog in when it wouldn't eat for more than 3 days, and you did.

What would've happened if you didn't take the dog in? If you kept leaving food out for it in case it did eat, but expecting that it probably wouldn't.

I imagine the dog would die on its own, but I have no idea of the time frame or what you could expect in that situation.

[tacocataco]

" the caveat that "the time" was when she wouldn't eat for three days."

Same as my cat. We were trying to force feed her and eventually she couldn't breathe when she choked on her food.

[iancmceachern]

Totally. Putting Jimmy down was the worst day of my life.

[warner25]

Great comment. I've had an interest in suicide prevention for many years and I think you're right on the mark.

I'm in the US military which has a suicide rate much higher than the general population[1], so prevention is a high priority, and hence my interest. A common thread is clearly that military service members are people who are willing to kill, and think differently about killing and death, and often have access to guns (most often personally owned, because they're gun enthusiasts, not because the military issues guns).

[1] My understanding is that after you adjust for demographics, because most service members are young males, the rate actually isn't higher, but the reality is what it is: we lose more people from suicide every year than combat operations.

[verteu]

> My understanding is that after you adjust for demographics, because most service members are young males, the rate actually isn't higher, but the reality is what it is: we lose more people from suicide every year than combat operations.

Interesting note, I didn't realize this. Apparently, demog-corrected military suicide rate was previously below civilians [1]. In a few recent years this may have reversed, per the graphs on https://chrisfrueh.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Smith-et-a... .

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=13069467757696393...

[giantg2]

"think differently about killing and death"

I think this is a huge factor that feel under represented for the population in general. I'd imagine this is part of a factor for the higher farmer suicide rates as well.

[derbOac]

I think this is a dangerous way to approach the problem. Regardless of whether or not the assertion that the "primary factor is they know how", the underlying cause is distress and hopelessness.

I'm frustrated a bit by how discussions of suicide — with vets as well as others — tends to focus on making the means less available, as if it just solves the problem. That's a solution for society, to wash their hands of addressing the underling problems, and not a solution for the person suffering.

Veterinarians should be in a position where they don't want to commit suicide, regardless of whether they have the means.

[candybar]

Sure, but at this point you're no longer talking about why vets are dying from suicide at a higher rate. We don't know if vets tend to deal with more "distress and hopelessness" than the general population.

[stvltvs]

It doesn't need to be either/or. Both aspects are important. If I or someone in my household were experiencing suicidal ideation, I'd remove firearms, for example, from the house while also trying to addressing the underlying causes.

[vjk800]

> What often stops otherwise suicidal folks is that it's not an easy thing to do

Is the take away from this that if all people knew how to kill themselves efficiently, the suicide rates in general population would be as high as they are among vets? It's pretty grim to think that the only thing that's stopping many people from killings themselves is that they don't know how...

[basisword]

I think it depends on how 'easy' it is. If it was as simple as pushing a button and you knew it was instant and painless I can imagine many times in my life I would have pressed that button - and I'm sure a lot of people might do it in moments of great distress, when thoughts of the future aren't there. I think the issue isn't the "know how" as you mentioned, it's more the difficulty and uncertainty (of pain and success). Working in a place that has the tools and you know how to use them reduces so many barriers to entry so to speak.

[wcedmisten]

There's a case study [1] from the UK when they phased out "coal gas" which contained carbon monoxide, and which many people were using to painlessly kill themselves via their ovens (Silvia Plathe being the most famous to do so). The conclusion was that removing this method of suicide did decrease the suicide rates over that time period.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I wouldn't be surprised.

I had an gf who was bipolar and suffering from PTSD and was on meds for those conditions and also due to previous suicide attempts.

I remember one conversation after we had broken up when she told me how depressed she had been and I said, "well at least you haven't offed yourself."

She smiled a bit and said, "I tried to kill myself three times in the last two months. I guess I'm not very good at it."

Answering the begged question: twenty+ years later and last time I checked she was still alive and well.

[Arrath]

> > "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."

Fuck me that is dark.

[at_a_remove]

The realization that to some pet, you're merely a fallible god, but one who can often offer little but death in an alien place, filled with the scent of sick, dying, and/or terrified other animals. Why am I here? Did I do something wrong? And your face is the last one they see. Run through that a thousand times per year and, unless you have monastic levels of detachment, you might end up feeling as if you were little more than the keen whistling edge of a scythe which never quite dried.

[TerrifiedMouse]

> Fuck me that is dark.

I mean we all die eventually. It’s just a matter of when and how much joy and suffering will we encounter on the way. If you look at it as an optimization problem, dying early can be the better scenario.

Frankly there are fates worse than death. To suffer for years before dying is just messed up. I hope that when I go it will be relatively quick. I can only hope it will be relatively painless but I think I will only be able to get that in a hospital setting.

[pydry]

This reminds me of bridge fences being successful at bringing down overall suicide: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610560/

[candybar]

Yup, suicidal attempts are often impulsive, so any barrier (in this case literally) even if it's relatively easy to get around, reduces suicide rates. Here's another study, this time on firearms:

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner...

> The researchers found that people who owned handguns had rates of suicide that were nearly four times higher than people living in the same neighborhood who did not own handguns. The elevated risk was driven by higher rates of suicide by firearm. Handgun owners did not have higher rates of suicide by other methods or higher rates of death generally.

Suicide attempts by firearm are far more likely to complete than most other means, ergo, suicide death rates are higher among those that have firearms.

[Scarblac]

In the Netherlands there is a problem of suicide by train near mental health institutions.

So they placed fences. That left the nearby crossings where there had to be gaps in the fencing. There they placed "anti walk mats", rubber(?) mats with a pointy surface that's hard (but not impossible) to walk on.

And those two together brought down the number of suicides by a lot.

[graypegg]

That actually gives me some appreciation for some seemingly pointless vertical posts my city put into a bridge near me.

[psychlops]

I think you are using the wrong statistics to make your point. The key point here is the there is a suicide difference between males and females. And vets are overwhelmingly male (90%).

Women attempt suicide a lot more and those statistics you used are skewing your conclusion. Men (vets or not) use guns and are more successful.

[candybar]

You're wildly off the mark here. From the study quoted:

> In 2017, over 60% of 110,531 US veterinarians were female, and in 2016, approximately 80% of students enrolled at US veterinary medical colleges were female.

> The PMRs for suicide for all veterinarian decedents (2.1 and 3.5 for males and females, respectively), those in clinical positions (2.2 and 3.4 for males and females, respectively), and those in nonclinical positions (1.8 and 5.0 for males and females, respectively) were significantly higher than for the general US population.

So no, this has nothing to do with vets being disproportionately male (which isn't the case to begin with).

[chaostheory]

> And nearly half of the respondents were not receiving mental health care.

Mental health care is rarely affordable or accessible even in countries with socialized health care systems. I guess that explains the rise of tele mental health sessions via apps, but who would trust them? Privacy is already a big issue, and it’s even more important when it comes to mental health care

[pas]

are vets not well-paid? (vet services' cost has risen a lot more than human healthcare's, so there's clearly a strong demand, thus a big consumer group willing to pay them)

are they consuming mental health services more/less compared to general population or compared to their zip code?

[alexashka]

> What often stops otherwise suicidal folks is that it's not an easy thing to do

Assuming you are acting in good faith - please give this a minute of thought.

The link you provided giving the 5.4% number - did you fail to read on to see what happened afterwards? To 81.8% of them within one year, explained in the very same paragraph?

Do you see how that 81.8% figure undermines your argument?

[nimih]

The 81.8% is out of the 5.4%. (In fact, it is out of a subpopulation of the 5.4%--it is the rate at which, given that the person died by suicide, but survived the first attempt, died within the subsequent year).

From the study:

> During the study period, 81/1,490 enrollees (5.4%) died by suicide. Of the 81, 48 (59.3%) perished on index attempt; 27 of the surviving 33 index attempt survivors (81.8%) killed themselves within a year.

[napierzaza]

It seems like one of the main issues is that vets have super easy access to a quick and painless death, as well as extreme familiarity with it. Just like having access to a gun makes you more likely to suicide. In general people with more access are more likely to commit suicide when they feel that way. Not trying to undermine that they also feel extra depressed due to the job though. I've seen a few of my pets be euthanize and it was torture.

[3seashells]

Xylacin syringe into the brainstem.. Nothing comes back from that.