Couldn't this just be what a community with a healthy view of death might look like? Vets see death every day and see it as a valid option to when life doesn't really work anymore. Am I the only one that doesn't see this as much as a problem for Vets as for the rest of us?
A suicide crisis among veterinarians
321–330 of 463 posts
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#322Are the people who profess to be animal lovers eat meat? There's a certain hypocrisy in caring for pets and disregarding the animals we kill by the billions for our palates, and cruelly [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/02/sufferin...
P.S. I am not disparaging the suffering of veterinarians.
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an extremely easy thing to say from a place of privilege, and of course there is some truth to it. On the other hand, how many chronically broke and miserable people out there are only hanging on for love of a pet (perhaps the only consistent source of love and meaning in their adult or entire lives)? I'll bet its a lot. But fuck them, they're poor so I guess they should either tough it out alone or die. Sorry…
I'd love to have a pet too, but I don't have the conditions for that (including financial conditions), so I don't. Even though I'd love to. But having a pet is responsibility, which includes financial responsibility. So yes, you shouldn't have a right to have a pet, when you can't afford it. That it may even be controversial is bewildering to me. Animals aren't things which exist for your pleasure.
As long as you can afford basic care for a pet, then you can have a pet.
food, water, bedding, the ability to keep it safe, vaccines(they're pretty cheap mostly and often done by animal shelters for free--neutering too).
There are so many pets in shelters who could live good happy lives but no one is there to adopt them.
Better a pet to live with an owner who cant afford their chemo when theyre 14 years old than to be euthanized at 2 years old.
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be there. I have had a cat die unexpectedly (heart failure) and she was in the car on the way to the vet when she died. She held on in the back seat until I was able to pull over and be with her. She was looking for me. You owe it to be there.
Ok I will definitely do it then. How long did it take to not feel just truly awful? Like I said... Ive never experienced that much grief/pain from loss before. I am scared how bad it will be, or what to expect.
It was my first time losing anyone/anything close to me as well.
I was acutely distressed for a good month and basically non functional for a week or so, which is embarrassing to admit, but this cat was with me through some really dark times when no people were there for me. I was holding her body and just wailing when we got home - I was a 30 something year old woman and I needed my mom to come over to manage what to actually do. There is no shame in the pain - it means you love your kitty.
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Ok I've had to double check to see where we've gone wrong. 5.4% is the number of people who died by suicide out of the studied sample. It is not the number of suicide attempts resulting in death, as implied by the original parent. It is actually 59.3% success on first attempt, and of those who failed on first try, 81.8% succeed in subsequent attempts within a year.
I think you're still a bit confused. 81.8% refers to, out of the population which _both_ failed in their first suicide attempt, _and also_ eventually (within the study observation window, i.e. 3-25 years) dies of suicide, the proportion who die within year 1 rather than years 2-25. In fact, the study authors point out that they found follow-up attempts _less_ likely to succeed compared to the initial attempt:
> Of the cohort, 3.2% (48/1,490) died on index attempt, whereas only 2.3% (33/1,442) of index attempt survivors went on to kill themselves. This drop in the suicide rate for survivors compared with those dead on index attempt held true for both men and women (males: from 6.7% to 4.8%; women: from 1.2% to 0.9%).
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#326We 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 surv…
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.
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's way better than anything I've seen. I get a 79.50$/mo quote with a $1000 deductible from Trupanion for my 2yr old dog. Which is why we've never picked it up. The $250 deductible version is a crazy $184.55/mo.
I'm not really familiar with how much dogs cost, but it seems like large dogs just cost a lot. I just did a quote for a small 2 year old dog (Maltipoo), and got $55/month. A 2 year old cat is $38/month. (I enrolled my cats as kittens.) I expect breed in general to be a much bigger factor with dogs than cats. Veterinary costs also vary significantly based on location.
This is true. If you're an experienced cat owner in good financial health, indoor cats are generally not worth insuring.
For dogs, it ranges wildly from "not worth it at all" to "mandatory" depending on the breed, and which breeds you should purchase insurance for is pretty trivial to find information for online. In general, bulldogs and large dogs are generally worth getting insurance for, as long as you get it when they're still puppies.
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see it as anything other than emotional extortion. It's not like the animal shelter is paying for that care. It's being written off, and the reason it's being written off is they make so much from the owners that do pay they can afford to do so.
It is NOT being written off. It is being paid for. It wouldn’t make any sense otherwise. It would be a lose lose for an animal shelter to receive this deeply fragile animal and the vet to do this expensive surgery for free.
Who do you think is paying $10k for this pup?
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
>$10k is nothing if you making half a million dollars a year and have $200k in credit with no balance, because your disposable income is probably $400-450k/yr. You must mean half a million after taxes .
People have no clue how much tax cuts out at higher income rates.
Man, this thread is a mess
There are a lot of people on this very site making 500k+ pre-tax. You're going to be taking home 300ish after taxes in that case, and it's not entirely unreasonable to "only" have 150ish for savings/investments/disposable income after your housing and living costs are taken out of that
If someone has $12k+ to spend per month and won't spend $10k to save their pet's life, they're an asshole IMO
Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians
#330I grew up on a farm. We lost a couple sheep. We had at least 3 different dogs over the time I lived there. We had a swarm of cats that came and went. We had a baby goat that died from tetanus, that was rough to watch. At least most of the chickens that died were because we butchered them. Animals die. It sucks, but way less than a human dying. Maybe life would be easier for vets if their customers had a more temporal…
I also grew up “country”, descending from a long line of rednecks. I think growing up around livestock and farm-pets (cats belong in the barn and are basically disposable…) leads to a super-different relationship with animals from what city folk have. Being around, and dealing, a lot more death. Doesn’t hit one as hard as people who didn’t have that experience.
> Doesn’t hit one as hard as people who didn’t have that experience.
Can't say I agree with that statement--it still hurts hard when animals you've raised for a very long time die. However, I pretty much concur with the rest.
Animals are not small people--they are animals.
If they are a young animal with good recovery and lots of lifespan ahead, sure, I'll spend money. Broken bones. Natch. Swallowed something stupid. No problem. Got in a fight and need to be put back together? Sure.
Once you start talking more advanced things like cancer. It becomes a "maybe". How many good years will that animal have after the treatment?
And I'm sorry, but I'm not going to spend a lot of money at the end of an animal's natural lifespan. It's only going to make a very marginal improvement in the amount of time you're going to get. And, the animal is likely to be miserable, to boot. Better to spend the last 3 months letting your dog do what it enjoys rather than to have it last 9 months of misery.
We are mortal. Pets are mortal. C'est la vie.