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A suicide crisis among veterinarians

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Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#161

Post by fishyjoe »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #78
wholinator2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you have not yet or are not able to experience the unconditional love of a loyal and caring non human companion. Someone who is always excited to see you. Say, some day your wife or husband dies and leaves you in an empty house your children have long moved out of. You wake up every day thinking of everything you've lost and begin to recluse, especially after your retirement. The house is empty, the people…

> I'm sorry you have not yet or are not able to experience the unconditional love of a loyal and caring I'm an adult. I'm supposed to give that sort of love, not receive it. That's one of the reasons I have children. Receiving it is for children. > You think that person is a low life? You think that person is a caveman who should just die alone? I think they're someone who can't afford $150/month in pet food. > I hop…

If you truly believe you don't deserve love because you're an adult, that's just really sad. Receiving love is for everyone.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#162

Post by dan-robertson »

I wonder how different it is for vets who mostly deal with livestock or horses. The article briefly mentions sometimes having to slaughter a whole herd because of a disease outbreak, but I assume the clients are at least easier to deal with as they don’t treat the animals like pets (for horses I guess there’s a bit of a mix but at least people who treat horses as pets will probably have more money they are willing to spend).

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#163

Post by heyoni »

NalNezumi wrote: post #143
candybar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

This makes me wonder more about the idea of legalizing assisted (pain-free) suicide, with the caveat that the process needs a lengthy evaluation time (background check for no coercion, mental evaluation etc). I wonder if it would have the opposite effect, reducing suicide rate by picking up the people so hopeless they would've just jumped a bridge/bought a gun if the option of peaceful suicide didn't exist.

It sounds like any length process would remove the impulsive component and should suffice.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#164

Post by rqtwteye »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #101
protastus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to see evidence that it's out of whack. Vets are are doctors, have to employ staff, and have training, processes and tools analogous to human medicine. There's no vet industrial complex, so no administrative/insurance/legal parasitic overhead like in human medicine (in the US).

I would question that second assertion; given the rise of pet insurance, private equity buying up clinics, and the increases in cost of veterinary care entirely out of line with inflation, my suspicion is that we're in fact in the early stages of the buildout of a vet industrial complex. Seems like the usual suspects have realized that there's a ton of money to be extracted by the veterinary industry and we're seeing…

"given the rise of pet insurance, private equity buying up clinics, and the increases in cost of veterinary care entirely out of line with inflation, my suspicion is that we're in fact in the early stages of the buildout of a vet industrial complex. "

In the last few years have seen several times how things go when private equity buys a dental or vet practice (or even plumbing) . The workers there are suddenly under a quota to make money, have less time but more stress, costs to the customer go up. The only beneficiaries are the private equity company. Everybody else loses big time.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#165

Post by rcarr »

fishyjoe wrote: post #146
rcarr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, genuine people who aren't playing social games laugh spontaneously , they don't contact the moral police to determine whether they can laugh or not. Other people who are more prone to going with the herd will wait to see what other people are doing and then determine whether they should laugh or not. You actually can see this in real time watching stand up comedians - for certain jokes the majority of the crowd…

I did not downvote you. It's barely related to the article because it is about suicide and you come in to tell an anecdote about how funny you find it that they use a certain word. Just completely tone-deaf. It's the word they use, nothing funny about it, and an article about suicide among vets is not the place for it. People having different viewpoints does not make you immune to criticism. You could just not talk,…

Complete horseshit. This isn't someone's funeral - it's a discussion forum. And even if it was a funeral, some people will crack jokes at them because that's how they cope. Do you think no-one told a joke at George Carlin's funeral? Do you think that soldiers don't crack jokes in the trenches because "it's not the appropriate place"?

I'm absolutely fine with having my viewpoints criticised, what I'm not fine with is being flagged and silenced simply for having a viewpoint that isn't hate speech. I consider the comment that did eventually get flagged as being justified because I got angry and frustrated in the moment at receiving five down votes in the space of a minute and let it get the better of me by calling animal lovers fucking militants, but if that line was removed and the comment was still flagged then I wouldn't consider it justified.

> You could just not talk, you're not the center of the universe.

Again, I don't know how you can type with a straight face and accuse me of being a narcisst when you are literally acting like you are humanity's judge, jury and executioner of what is and isn't relevant, what is and isn't funny, what is and isn't appropriate and who should and shouldn't speak. If you don't personally find it useful or funny fine, but don't act like you're speaking on behalf of all humanity, it's completely sanctimonious.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#166

Post by RationPhantoms »

londons_explore wrote: post #13
the_gipsy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you met a bunch of junkies that are so determined that they picked their career around drug-access.

Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I have met 4 vets now, all in different walks of life (yoga class, my rock climbing buddies, an ex-colleague who did a career change, and a cousin), and all of them have at least experimented with animal drugs... Hard to believe it isn't widespread in the industry.

Guess you've never met anyone in finance, huh?

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#167

Post by maxwell »

rednerrus wrote: post #160
maxwell wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Peace in Europe is shattered. The former President of the United States has been indicted multiple times on dozens of felony charges. R&D on the killer bipedal robots + assassination drones + AI from your favorite sci-fi movies is nearing completion. Full Nineteen Eighty-Four -style surveillance totalitarianism has been rolled out in occupied China and is at the pilot stage in most western…

I could address each of these points and show how you've taken a narrow, specific stance to focus on the negative things in the world. I could point to hundreds of instances that show your view doesn't accurately represent the current state of the world or accurately place it in the context of history. It doesn't accurately account for the scale of historic cruelty, violence, famine, war, oppression, etc. Steven Pink…

Haha, yeah, I read the book too, no bland autogenerated pap with zero citations necessary. It clouded my worldview and made me complacent and content with my privilege in the early 2010s. The other usual citation here is Hans Rosling.

Think any of the 50 million slaves have had the chance to read the erudite works of Steven Pinker?

You haven't addressed any of my points, haven't pointed to a single instance of inaccuracy in anything I cited, and haven't provided a shred of (parochial-sounding) "historical context."

Here's a book recommendation for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#169

Post by giantg2 »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #16
Fomite wrote: post #4

I work in a veterinary school, and it's remarkable to see how worn down veterinarians are compared to my colleagues in "people medicine" (and my comparison group are infectious disease folks - they're not exactly a cheerful group). To be honest, at this point, between how hard it is to get into vet school, the debt load, and how you're signing up for crushing compassion fatigue your whole life, and a career of hoping…

> hoping someone will pay for a procedure to save their pet's life while being braced for "I guess we should put them down..." I'm sorry, but vet costs are completely out of whack with reality these days. The truth of the matter is that most people cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on a pet, no matter how much they are loved, and that DOES NOT make them bad or unfit owners. The story quoted $10k to remove…

I've found most veterinary care and meds to be very affordable. Major surgeries or specialized equipment (for large animals like horses) can be expensive.

Yeah, the schools are going to be expensive just as colleges are. Similar to med school, you're looking at high costs of educators, equipment, etc.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#170

Post by brink »

runlaszlorun wrote: post #110

This article hit me pretty hard. But I really wish we could find a better term than 'mental health crisis'. I think it's a polite form of victim blaming. At what point are we just gonna admit that we've built a crap world and we oughta have an honest conversation about fixing it?

> At what point are we just gonna admit that we've built a crap world and we oughta have an honest conversation about fixing it?

When we start admitting the problem is fundamental to human nature, meaning we start pointing the finger at ourselves instead of only at other people. Until then, this cycle will only continue.

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