 A lot of us have little furry friends like my beautiful Maya here and the people who take care of them are vets and there's a lot of mental health issues with veterinarians and I brought a very special guest to talk about him today. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem of focus on the solution and that's Maya. How beautiful is she? So right now when you're watching this I'm out of town and yeah Maya wants to get down so I'm gonna let her down but that is my beautiful little kitty Maya and I have heard about you know the mental health issues with veterinarians. I've heard that suicide rates are high, depression is very very bad and it's something that baffles me right but a lot of mental illness baffles me and that's why I try to educate myself and learn more and spread awareness because so many of us are just stuck in our own bubble. We think about ourselves, we don't think about the struggles that other people are going through but anyways I have a very good friend, his name is Dr. Alex Avery. He is actually a veterinarian from New Zealand and he's done some guest videos on my channel. He's awesome. He has an entire channel just giving like health advice for your pets so if you have a dog or cat make sure you go subscribe to his channel. He gives so so so many free tips like he does what I do but for pets health like I try to give you guys mental health advice and things like that like here on YouTube he does the same thing for pets so anyways Dr. Alex was bringing up some of the statistics about veterinarian suicide rates and things like that I'm like yo why don't you come over and do a guest video about this topic so without further ado here is the amazing Dr. Alex. Hi so big thanks to Chris for inviting me to come and talk to you today and you might be wondering why the mental health of vets is important to you what could you possibly learn from it well keep watching to the end because I've got some strategies and some points that really relate to everybody no matter what your profession no matter what you're doing with your life and no matter where you're living. Let's think about what people think of that so think yourself what do you think of when you think of a vet so many people will think of someone who is earning a good salary who is pretty wealthy who gets to deal and look after with a lot of cute animals who gets a lot of satisfaction from from making our pets better and you certainly wouldn't be alone in thinking that but there is actually a dark side to the profession that thankfully is being exposed and is being addressed but that is that vets are four to eight times more likely to commit suicide than the general population that is a shocking statistic in one canadian study 20 of vets had considered suicide and nine percent had actually attempted to take their own life is that what you thought of when you thought of what a vet is like and there's a number of reasons why this might be the case i'm certainly not an expert but there's a number of things that have been put forward so getting a degree is expensive going to vet school is expensive and the average amount of debt for a new graduate coming out to vet school is about 160 thousand dollars and in fact 20 percent of new graduates in america have a debt of over 200 thousand dollars and that's when they're starting their career so you know that is a huge burden to to start working under you know it's a a significant chunk of a house now earnings aren't bad and certainly no vet would say that they're earning a pittance but when you consider the amount of debt that you're having to service and having to repay they're actually not fantastic many people think that vets and doctors would be earning about the same but in reality vets actually generally earn about half the amount of their human doctor counterparts is that what you thought in many cases vets are working in isolation we're working in small clinics we don't have access to a big hospital team with a lot of experienced senior colleagues we may not be able to refer complicated cases to specialists because of the cost involved and that can all lead to feelings of isolation and feelings of frustration and feelings of failure so that's something that many vets have to deal with we also have to work in many cases with severe budgetary constraints so we're trying to make our dogs and our cats that we're seeing better but we're dealing with you know very low funds able to make that happen we're not able to do the investigations we need we're not able to maybe do the the best treatments for our patients and we're often working with owners who have potentially unrealistic expectations of one how much vets vet bills cost how much medical care costs but also what we're able to do with the limited funds available so we're trying to also balance our feelings and our desires to do the very best for our patient and that makes things very emotional and it can leave some really conflicting conflicting feelings we're also having to deal with euthanasia on a daily certainly weekly basis and unfortunately we're not always euthanasia just because animals have reached the end of their lives sometimes we're having to euthanas patients with conditions that are treatable but that treatment would just cost an awful lot of money and without that our patients life is compromised so again that can leave to lead to really conflicting feelings kind of within within a vets mind so we're trying to do the very best but we're not able to and while euthanasia is justified it can you know leave us with really conflicting emotions and emotions is another thing that we have to deal with so i could have mentioned owner emotion we have to deal with a lot of people saying oh we're only in it for the money or if you cared about animals you would treat my pet for free now rationally you'll be aware that that's completely unrealistic but it's something that we will get very regularly that vets are too expensive we charge too much we're only in it for the money and we don't really care about our patients combine that with social media with people leaving negative reviews with people unfairly criticizing vets on local forums and that kind of thing that can lead to a real negative opinion and actually as vets we're not allowed to defend ourselves so we're not allowed to answer any any any claims of mistreatment or ill treatment or wrong diagnosis misdiagnosis we're not allowed to answer any claims and explain a kind of our side of the story that the fact that maybe the animal was only presented very late on in the disease and if only the owner had got the their pet to us earlier there would be more that we could do because of client confidentiality we're not allowed to do that and tragically there are several cases where because of a negative social media campaign against a vet they have chosen to end their life you know this isn't a theoretical risk this has actually happened and that just can't be right and anyone who uses forums and anyone who voices negative negative sentiments potentially and often unfairly has to take responsibility for being part of the problem so this isn't meant to be a rant about how bad life as a vet is or how difficult the job is and how we're special I'm certainly aware that every profession will have its issues will have its challenges and will have its downsides but it perhaps raises the the issue of the fact that just because you perceive something to be the case that's actually not always what life is really like for the person living in that situation and I think this can teach us all a few really crucial points and really number one is just to be kind so if we're kind to other people if we're kind to whoever we come across we really can't go too far wrong and factored into this is to be quick to praise to be quick to give positive feedback to be quick to thank but to be slow to criticize be slow to complain if you're angry don't just jump in there with negative thoughts take time to settle down to have a think about it to think of things from other person's point of view we're all humans we all make mistakes your vet is no different your doctor is no different your mechanic is no different um your teacher your child's teacher is no different if you're human you make mistakes and you can't expect anyone to to to never make a mistake so those are a couple of things to think about and finally really accept that all of us we all have challenges we all have demons to face we all have things other things going on in our lives so it might be the sickness of a relative it might be money worries it you know it can be any number of things that we're worried about or that the person that you're dealing with is worried about so just having a bit of compassion and really that goes back to being kind so from the vet's point of view thankfully the stigma and the taboo nature of suicide and mental health among the vets is changing there are some strategies being put in place there are helplines and support being given or being available for vets who are struggling and hopefully as a profession we managed to make a a change to the general nature to the working practice to the mental health of anyone practicing within this field and that includes our vet techs and our support staff and anyone involved in veterinary care if we can recognize the problem and then address the root causes we can hopefully put some great strategies in place to reduce the rate of suicide among vets it's obviously something that i feel very strongly about and is very close to home and we can all play a role in this so i hope that's helped in some way i hope it's give you a little bit of an insight into you know what someone else might be dealing with or it might help you feel like you're not alone and that actually someone who may seem to be a success and to have it all is actually struggling with very often the same things that that you're dealing with we're all human after all so thanks again to chris thanks for the great advice that he gives on the Rewired Soul and take care all right thank you so so so much Dr Alex for coming over and by the way again there's going to be links all over the place in the info card in the description and at the end screen to subscribe to Dr Alex's channel he's doing amazing work over there but yeah like with something i try to preach on my channel all the time is just empathy empathy empathy empathy right and you know like Dr Alex said like this isn't something you know like don't don't go like pitting your vet or don't think that oh you know their life is so rough but it's just like this is just something i try to do on a daily basis and like if you're somebody who struggles with like anger issues or uh you know really high emotions like this is something i'd use to calm myself down like i never know what the other person's going through right like you gotta imagine like when you go see your vet right you're just there with your animal seeing your vet but what's their day been like what's their week been like have they had to put any animals down like that is rough that takes a toll like me i work in the drug and alcohol treatment industry and some days are really really rough for me i have people who pass away from overdoses or suicides and then after that i have to go and then teach a group in front of a lot of clients and they don't know what just happened you know what i mean so like i think the moral of this is some empathy and i i've been preaching about this lately too like since my Shane Dawson video like just spread some kindness like i would love two things two things the first one is if you have a pet if you have an animal like and next time you see a vet like just say thank you you know what i mean like try to put yourself in their shoes like say thank you write them a thank you note whatever you gotta do just like tell them thank you you know what i mean but the other thing i'm gonna ask you to do is go subscribe to dr alex like i know a lot of you out there have an animal like you are not going to get this type of free pet advice from many places like dr alex said you know i get this too working in the uh mental health treatment world like people are like oh if you really cared about people you would do this for free right well dr alex is one of those guys like me where he is doing this stuff for free on the platform of youtube so please do me a favor go support him go subscribe to his channel and if you don't have an animal for some crazy reason not crazy reason some people just don't have animals but if you know somebody who has a pet that they love and adore have them go subscribe to dr alex's channel all right so thank you so so much again dr alex for doing this guest video and that's all i got um let's do this let's do this down in the comments below if you have a pet down in the comments let me know what kind of pet you have and what their name is and if you have multiple pets just list them all all right let's do that but if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're new here i'm always making videos about mental health so make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you're all amazing right there you can click a tap to go subscribe to dr alex's channel our pets health all right thanks so much again for watching i will see you soon