Sad to see this statistic.

On a brisk fall evening in Elizabeth City, N.C., Robin Stamey sat in her bed and prepared to take her own life.

To her side lay a stack of goodbye letters Stamey had written to her loved ones, including her parents who lived hundreds of miles away. Gripping a catheter loaded with a deadly dose of Beuthanasia-D and Telazol, euthanizing agents the 46-year-old veterinarian had brought home from her nearby practice, she exhaled slowly and began to bid the world goodbye. But as she turned to look at Gracie, her apricot toy poodle, Stamey started to sob.

She couldn't do it.

"The only person I couldn't explain my suicide to was my dog, who was sitting there looking into my eyes," Stamey recalled. "She's the reason I'm still alive."

The path to rock bottom was an unexpected one for Stamey. A chipper animal lover who went back to school at age 36 to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a veterinarian, she had previously worked in a few small clinics before eventually opening her own.

Pulling this off wasn't easy; Stamey graduated from veterinary school with more than $180,000 in student debt. Her first vet jobs paid about $40,000 a year, forcing her to work long hours to scrape together enough money to get by.

These financial troubles were compounded by the strains of the job, which is known for taking immense emotional, physical and mental tolls on its professionals. But like many people who work in medicine, Stamey had always thought of herself as a caretaker and was afraid to ask for help. Instead, she swallowed her frustrations and soldiered on, ignoring the creeping depression that began to cast a shadow over her life and her work.

In 2007, everything fell apart. Burnt out from a near-decade of grueling work, Stamey was struck by crippling fatigue and painful internal swelling that doctors couldn't explain.

This mystery ailment - diagnosed years later as Bartonellosis, or cat-scratch fever - stripped Stamey of the vigor that had once defined her, leaving her barely enough energy to crawl across her floor to feed her pet dogs, let alone run her practice.

Rumors that she was addicted to drugs and alcohol, fed by small-town gossip and social media exchanges between angry clients, spread through the community. Eventually, even friends turned on her.

"I didn't lose an arm or a leg, so my illness and my withering mental health wasn't real to them," Stamey said, citing a tense phone conversation with an old friend as the moment that she decided to commit suicide. "I was suffering, alone, and didn't know where to turn to for help. I just wanted it all to end."

Stamey said she felt isolated in her pain at the time, but she has since learned a startling truth: Veterinarians are in the midst of a suicide epidemic of massive proportions.

Pushed to the brink by mounting debt, compassion fatigue and social media attacks from angry pet owners, veterinarians are committing suicide at rates higher than the general population, often killing themselves with drugs meant for their patients.

On Jan. 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the first study to ever examine veterinarian mortality rates in America. The results were grim: Between 1979 and 2015, male and female veterinarians committed suicide between 2 to 3.5 times more often than the national average, respectively.

These findings not only reflect a higher suicide rate among all veterinarians but also suggest that women in the field are more likely to take their own lives, which starkly contrasts trends within the general population.

Considering the profession is becoming increasingly female-dominated (more than 60 percent of U.S. veterinarians and 80 percent of veterinary students are now female), the study's authors suggested this trend could foreshadow even more veterinarian suicides in the years to come.

Additional research, including a 2015 CDC study that found one in six veterinarians have considered suicide, have shaken the veterinary world to its core, exposing a growing crisis that few knew of and others had sought to ignore.

Stamey is among those who are standing up and sharing their stories, refusing to brush the problem aside.

"It was devastating to realize how many of us are hurting, but it's more important to know the cards are finally on the table," she said. "We can't truly address this until we start being honest with ourselves and caring for one another."

To grasp the extent of their desperation, one must understand what it's like to be a veterinarian today.

One of the most competitive medical fields - veterinary school acceptance rates are comparable with medical school acceptance rates, but prospective vets are often asked to complete more prerequisite undergraduate courses - it's a profession that attracts intelligent, driven people who, above all else, want to help and treat animals.

As obvious as it is, that latter component is critical: People don't become veterinarians for prestige, power or high pay. But diving into passion-driven professions leaves the door open for compassion fatigue and burnout, and the veterinary field is riddled with mental health hazards. Unsurprisingly, two of the largest factors at play are money and death.

Veterinarian school is costly. Recent studies conducted by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the industry's largest nonprofit advocacy entity, show that the average veterinary student now graduates with $143,000 or more in debt; about one in five leave school with more than $200,000 to pay off. Veterinary salaries, which start at about $67,000 a year, aren't keeping pace with rising tuition rates.

"Tuitions are going up, salaries are staying stagnant and the debt just compounds by the second. I've got friends who have graduated with anywhere from $100,000 to over $500,000 of debt," said Lynn Green-Ivey, a San Antonio veterinarian who graduated from the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Science. "Many of those people with those higher debt loads are facing an insurmountable monetary challenge. They will die with that debt and it's really, really sad."

The impact of these financial handicaps hits veterinarians far beyond their wallets. Pressed to pay off their debt while attempting to save money to buy homes, start families, or run their own practices, many vets find themselves routinely working well over 50 hours a week. They're even forced to pick up second jobs in some cases, taking on overnight shifts at emergency clinics or helping out at rescue shelters.

"More often than not, you've got to work and work and work without a bathroom break and scarf your lunch down in three minutes or less just to keep up with the daily responsibilities," Green-Ivey said. "The pressure to do more and to do better for your clients is constant and never-ending.

"We're determined, passionate people who are used to putting our clients and our animals before ourselves. But these traits, which make us good doctors, are the same things that make us more susceptible to depression, anxiety and letting negative emotions chip away at us," Green-Ivey said.

Another key driver of this suicide crisis: Veterinarians are consistently asked to act as animal undertakers. Euthanizing their clients can cause what a recent study referred to as ethical conflict and moral distress, which arises when vets are forced to put aside their expert opinions and accept pet owners' decisions about if and when to put their animals down. More so, this proximity to death makes dying seem like a reasonable way to ease suffering.

These factors create a troubling set of circumstances, especially since vets routinely have access to controlled euthanasia drugs. If you're armed with the knowledge of how to administer a quick, painless death and regularly experience trauma and stress, it's clear how suicide can become an accessible option.

As this problem has become more publicly acknowledged, veterinarians have formed online support groups to discuss sensitive topics. It's all about providing a sense of community to people who feel isolated, said Carrie Rountree, a vet tech who lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Rountree created the Facebook group #TheFightingBluesForAmanda to honor her friend, Amanda Ryan, after Ryan killed herself in September. In less than two months, the group's membership grew to nearly 5,000 people and includes veterinary professionals from around the world.

"Without online communities like this, I believe there would be increased risk and, consequently, even more tragic losses like Amanda's," Rountree said. "Now that we have tools like this to connect with people from all across the globe, this issue can no longer be ignored. Only through awareness can we create true change."

Smaller groups, including a Facebook group Robin Stamey called "Veterinary Medicine: Staying Alive," are now sprinkled throughout social media platforms.

The organization at the crest of the industry's new wellness wave is Not One More Vet. An online support network that's emerging as a leading nonprofit in the field, NOMV has spearheaded a nationwide mental health education initiative and created a grant program to provide financial assistance to veterinarians who can't access affordable mental health care. It also provides temporary relief workers to ensure emotionally depleted vets can take a few days off to rest and recharge.

"We're focused on so many things right now, but at the end of the day, our first priority is training people about what to do when someone expresses the desire to die," said Carrie Jurney, a veterinary neurologist and NOMV board member. "I want that skill to no longer be necessary, but until we can dig our profession out of this crisis, the first step is that emergency, mental health CPR-level care."

These grass-roots efforts have caught the attention of the AVMA, the industry's largest player. In addition to amplifying the findings of the CDC's groundbreaking research, the AVMA has created a suite of mental well-being resources for its members, including free trainings on how to identify at-risk colleagues and direct them to professional support.

The organization has also begun leading discussions about work-life balance and wellness and provides guides to finding local mental health services, moves that reflect its mission to remove the profession's long-standing stigma around the topic.

"For really the first time ever, this subject is being talked about from the time people walk into veterinary school, through one's early career, all the way up to the top of the industry," said John de Jong, president of the AVMA. "That's the only way we can tackle this and make real progress: through a holistic, all-hands-on-deck approach."

Unfortunately, there’s one X factor these organizations can’t account for: relentless pressure from emotional, sometimes misguided pet owners. Compared with dentists or doctors working in human medicine, veterinarians are more likely to have their professional opinions second-guessed or rejected by clients.

The experience is not just grating. It can lead to angry Internet attacks by impassioned clients, including instances in which viral social media attacks eventually led to targeted veterinarians committing suicide.

Shirley Koshi, a Bronx veterinarian who took her own life after facing a barrage of harassment and accusations of veterinary abuse in a dispute over a stray cat, is an especially haunting example of what many professionals worry could one day happen to them. The specter of Internet attacks has become so severe that the AVMA introduced a Cyberbullying Response Assistance Hotline in 2016.

Despite recent efforts to address veterinarian suicide, most people in the field - the AVMA and NOMV included - acknowledge this is only the beginning of the healing process. It will take time to understand the spectrum of factors fueling this phenomenon and gauge the success of still-developing prevention strategies.

But Stamey said she feels hopeful because the problem is no longer lurking in the shadows.

“This isn’t some abstract. These are real people’s lives; husbands, wives, sons, daughters, your friends, your family, your veterinarian,” she said. “Healing and perspective will take time, but for now we just need to listen and learn. You’d be shocked by who’s struggling around you.”

by David Leffler

LINK: https://www.nola.com/news/2019...her-populations.html

Sad stuff, but regarding the debt issue, until both students and the schools—but especially the students—stop looking at student loans as free money, schools will have no incentive to stop raising their tuitions and fees. The old pricing law of supply and demand doesn’t apply when buyers don’t worry about costs, and that’s what the student loan program promotes. When enough prospective students say, “No, I’m not going into deep debt to keep paying more and more for an education,” more and more money will continue to be needed.

As I’ve mentioned before, Henry Hazlitt pointed out the dangers of unrestricted government loans in Economics in One Lesson as far back as 1946. He was talking about home loans, but the principles are the same with student loans.

Vets are coming out of school over three hundred thousand in debt in some cases.

My brother interviewed a woman for a position and she was shocked at the entry level wages; she wouldn't be able to cover her debts. He pointed out that virtually all vets have to work two jobs initially, and that he did it for fifteen years, often sleeping in the office and working all night. She wouldn't be able to bring enough money into the practice to cover her salary, let alone merit a higher one; just a fact of life in that business.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Sad stuff, but regarding the debt issue, until both students and the schools—but especially the students—stop looking at student loans as free money, schools will have no incentive to stop raising their tuitions and fees. The old pricing law of supply and demand doesn’t apply when buyers don’t worry about costs, and that’s what the student loan program promotes. When enough prospective students say, “No, I’m not going into deep debt to keep paying more and more for an education,” more and more money will continue to be needed.

As I’ve mentioned before, Henry Hazlitt pointed out the dangers of unrestricted government loans in Economics in One Lesson as far back as 1946. He was talking about home loans, but the principles are the same with student loans.

Your last paragraph is the most important. Until government is removed from the school loan process, breaking the incestuous relationship between college tuition costs and government funding of them, tuition will simply continue to go up as colleges continue to pad their coffers with 'free' money. We also need to break the ridiculously stupid paradigm that 'all' kids should go to college. We have far too many kids in college today who have no business being there.

A lot of vet school grads are in income based repayment programs where they make annually adjusted monthly payments for 20 years and then the balance at the end of that time is forgiven. Of course the payments don't even cover the interest for a lot of them so the overall balance increases until the end. Then, the government treats the loan forgiveness as income and they get to pay taxes on it.

If you have a half million dollars forgiven, think about what taxes on that will be...

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
Vets are coming out of school over three hundred thousand in debt in some cases.

My brother interviewed a woman for a position and she was shocked at the entry level wages; she wouldn't be able to cover her debts. He pointed out that virtually all vets have to work two jobs initially, and that he did it for fifteen years, often sleeping in the office and working all night. She wouldn't be able to bring enough money into the practice to cover her salary, let alone merit a higher one; just a fact of life in that business.

I’m simple minded but I would expect people to research that before picking their profession. My daughter wanted to teach so I told her she would never make as much as me (I’ve only got a high school education and she has her masters) but she was willing to accept that. I made sure she understood the salaries in her profession. She graduated with zero debt and is now a college English professor.

quote:

sigfreund
Freethinker

posted January 22, 2019 06:08 PM Hide Post
Sad stuff, but regarding the debt issue, until both students and the schools—but especially the students—stop looking at student loans as free money, schools will have no incentive to stop raising their tuitions and fees.

Absolutely true. And what do administrators do with all the money pouring in from these inflated loans? Why, they hire more administrators.

Dad was a Vet. I was for many years a main helper from kennel boy to surgeon. And euthanasia. I am still quite able to handle blood and guts and death in many forms. Euthanizing sort of numbs you to that. I don't like it though. Putting down injured and elderly animals wasn't so hard. I even held our own pets for the deed. That was the hardest. Despite all that, I was most bothered by the killing floor at the meat factory. Those animals had no good life before that.
Dad was old school Vet. There never was a lot of money in it. His schooling was on scholarship in the early 40s. And Dad went to work for the govt right away. (All Vet work 1941-47)

I’d be surprised if the reason for a higher rate of suicide wasn’t linked to the fact that vets really care about pets. Instead of taking the more clinical fatalistic approach that doctors seem to in the knowledge that despite best efforts people die, I believe vets have a stronger emotional approach to their profession. I can remember only one vet in my entire life that didn’t seem to feel genuinely empathetic to pet suffering and that was this guy:

https://www.gadsdentimes.com/n...y-released-from-jail

He set his own practice on fire, killing clients pets in the process. At the time, his becoming addicted to prescription meds was the reason suspected. A true turd.

I can fully appreciate and sympathize with the above article highlighting Vets issues, but the rate of suicide for MANY other occupations vastly outweighs the above numbers.

The occupational group with the highest male suicide rate in 2012 and 2015 was Construction and Extraction (43.6 and 53.2 per 100,000 civilian noninstitutionalized working persons, respectively), whereas the group with the highest female suicide rate was Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media (11.7 [2012] and 15.6 [2015]). The largest suicide rate increase among males from 2012 to 2015 (47%) occurred in the Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media occupational group (26.9 to 39.7) and among females, in the Food Preparation and Serving Related group, from 6.1 to 9.4 (54%). CDC’s technical package of strategies to prevent suicide is a resource for communities, including workplace settings (1).

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6745a1.htm

Military veterans’ suicides account for 18% of the suicide deaths in the country, while they only make up 8.5% of the adult population.

Source: https://www.va.gov/opa/pressre...srelease.cfm?id=2951

if history does actually repeat itself, look for the nations veterans to be housed on reservations ,
land set aside , perhaps national parks or national monuments.

cast aside by the people they served.
its horrible how these warriors are treated

quote:

Originally posted by Hamden106:
Dad was a Vet. I was for many years a main helper from kennel boy to surgeon. And euthanasia. I am still quite able to handle blood and guts and death in many forms. Euthanizing sort of numbs you to that. I don't like it though. Putting down injured and elderly animals wasn't so hard. I even held our own pets for the deed. That was the hardest. Despite all that, I was most bothered by the killing floor at the meat factory. Those animals had no good life before that.
Dad was old school Vet. There never was a lot of money in it. His schooling was on scholarship in the early 40s. And Dad went to work for the govt right away. (All Vet work 1941-47)

I've wondered about that, not just the pets that must be put down weekly -- a few or more I'd guess for a decent practice -- but what led to that decision. Diagnosis, treatment, deteriorating health, dealing with grief and sadness daily.

People seem almost freer to let their loss show than with humans they lose. The vets see that. I know being a vet comes with success and wins but the ugly is always there.

I worked in news and was around death early and often. And yeah, you put up a wall to some extent, only so much emotional involvement or surely madness would follow. So much of that death was the result of bad choices on one person's part or another's.

Pets don't make choices as such and dealing with their deaths is just different. And very hard in a unique way.

I wanted to be a vet so I worked for an established well known Phoenix vet through high school and college. He owned his land and building and had just three employees. He told me he was well over $150,000 in debt from school and equipment.

Our current vet has a huge practice with a new building and equipment, employs about 10 associate vets and at least 20 support staff. I can't imagine his debt.

I can believe that many vets are under tremendous stress from putting pets down. With one exception, every vet has cried like we did.

My wife and I are both veterinarians and have been practicing together for 22 years. We are fortunate to have a very successful practice so money is not an issue like it was early on.

I am a self proclaimed "tough guy", raised on a farm, redneck to the bone. But I can tell you that compassion fatigue is a real thing. I tell my associates that when it no longer affects them to "put down" a patient that they need to find a new occupation, I certainly would not want them in my practice.

Combine that and dealing with psychos on social media, my wife and I go through burn out about once every 12-18 months. Luckily we have each other to lean on, I would hate to see what will happen if we both go through it at the same time though.

I can definitely see where that with financial stress it could lead a weaker person to look for a way out. I wish I had the answer but if you are a caring vet it comes with the territory.

Tommy

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
if history does actually repeat itself, look for the nations veterans to be housed on reservations ,
land set aside , perhaps national parks or national monuments.

cast aside by the people they served.
its horrible how these warriors are treated

What the hell are you talking about?

You DO realize this is about Veterinarian (animal docs) Vets, not Veteran Vets?



I don't understand this part: Can none of these people do simple math and figure out that $180,000 to $300,000 in student loan debt is something they will NEVER PAY OFF?

Just do some numbers and walk away! Don't even get into this field.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

I don't understand this part: Can none of these people do simple math and figure out that $180,000 to $300,000 in student loan debt is something they will NEVER PAY OFF?

Just do some numbers and walk away! Don't even get into this field.

"These people?"

Of course they'll pay it off. My brother did, and ended up owning two practices.

It's not a get rich quick scheme. It is, however, a profession. Like many professions, success takes time and a fair amount of commitment.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
You DO realize this is about Veterinarian (animal docs) Vets, not Veteran Vets?

That post was so bizarre that I could only believe that he thought he was being funny in a thread about the anguish suffered by a group of caring people. The title of the thread spells out “veterinarians,” so, “Oh, I didn’t read the whole thing,” can’t even be claimed as an excuse.

As I’ve thought about this, I wonder how many people decide to become veterinarians because of their love for animals without giving much thought to what it all involves. I’m sure there are many exceptions, but when someone like that is faced with the reality of what the profession demands coupled with other stressors, it could be rough.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
You DO realize this is about Veterinarian (animal docs) Vets, not Veteran Vets?

That post was so bizarre that I could only believe that he thought he was being funny in a thread about the anguish suffered by a group of caring people. The title of the thread spells out “veterinarians,” so, “Oh, I didn’t read the whole thing,” can’t even be claimed as an excuse.

As I’ve thought about this, I wonder how many people decide to become veterinarians because of their love for animals without giving much thought to what it all involves. I’m sure there are many exceptions, but when someone like that is faced with the reality of what the profession demands coupled with other stressors, it could be rough.

The post right above his mentioned suicide numbers for Veterans (see the quote below). I assumed that was why he posted what he did.

“Military veterans’ suicides account for 18% of the suicide deaths in the country, while they only make up 8.5% of the adult population.

Source: https://www.va.gov/opa/pressre...release.cfm?id=2951”

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
The post right above his mentioned suicide numbers for Veterans (see the quote below). I assumed that was why he posted what he did.

Okay, now I understand. It was not a thread drift, but a thread … what? Cataract? Torrent?

But since we’re on that runaway ride already, that’s something else I’ve never understood. Someone posts that something is bad, and inevitably Ted Topper has to jump in with, “Well, you think that’s bad, what about …?”

I personally don’t have the heartburn with some suicides as others do, but if someone commits suicide because of despair over debt or job stress, how does pointing out that others commit suicide because of marital problems or PTSD make it any better? It’s not some sort of contest to see who has the worst life or the best reason for committing suicide: “Ha, you killed yourself because you regret euthanizing so many dogs; what do you think it’s like to kill people—including women and children—by dropping bombs on them?”

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I don't understand this part: Can none of these people do simple math and figure out that $180,000 to $300,000 in student loan debt is something they will NEVER PAY OFF?

Just do some numbers and walk away! Don't even get into this field.

That's a mortgage, not a student loan...

I have a friend who took out huge loans for school, even borrowed for her MBA. I have no idea how much in the hole she is but she said her monthly repayment is $1,400/month. That's a mortgage payment to me.

Most of my friends are borrowing to pay for their MBA from a private school. Tuition itself before fees, books, interest, workshops, etc. is around $75k for the 2 year program. No way in hell I would borrow that type of money to go to school. If I was borrowing money to go to school, it's going to be a state school.