Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A suicide crisis among veterinarians

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 463 posts

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#341

Post by MiscCompFacts »

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…

Here’s prior discussion of VC firms buying up veterinary practices, and installing new management to squeeze out more value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36313967

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#342

Post by agumonkey »

heyoni wrote: post #292
agumonkey wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very interesting view point. Existence used to be cohesive, ritualized, we were all close to and part of every aspect of it. Now it's all industrialized, and it's not surprising that it's dehumanizing to people in charge.

My wife thinks that in time of peace we should require kids that turn 18 to spend a year doing some community service. Somewhere far from home.

I so wish our cultures did something like that. I think Denmark has a habit of 18yo kids going away for a year, to live freely with new found majority status.

I was also thinking international community swaps.. people from one country would have opportunities to go, not to their direct neighbours, but one frontier further. To make people know about other countries on the field. The plan would be to have kids all around develop a clearer bond with people far away and avoid dehumanised reflex hatred.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#343

Post by derbOac »

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?

Indeed. Suicide rates in the US reached an all-time high last year:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/cdc-data-finds-...

I didn't really see the article itself as victim blaming, but I agree that the way suicide is framed often does just that, and there's a bit of that covered in the piece. Not a collective effort by professional groups to address the stressors identified, but a focus on the mental state of the vets, as if it's all in their head and a "mental hygenic" issue.

This approach seems pretty par for the course now: mental wellness is a focus in professional groups, HR, whatever, but it's seen as something like exercise, where whatever happens is caused by the person's own head, and the stressors are just part of normal life, not something to be fixed or changed.

Sometimes I've felt like society gets way off course, and huge systemic gaps that develop, between reality and the schemas in people's minds about what's going on. There are usually segments of society that end up picking up the slack, depending on the worst parts of society's distortions, and in this case it feels like vets are one of those groups.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#344

Post by Exuma »

Mezzie wrote: post #324
Exuma wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That makes me feel a lot better... thank you

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#345

Post by Fomite »

pc86 wrote: post #91
Fomite wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one of the things that comes up a lot is that it's not actually that correlated with cost. Most vets I know (I also work for a state school, not a for profit company) are very sympathetic toward very large and expensive bills, and have always been up front about cost in a way that human medicine is not. There's also a myriad of ways they try to reduce bills when they can. The toll is from folks who aren't spending…

The absolute amount of money is irrelevant, it matters what percentage of a person's disposable income it is. $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. $200 is a ruinous amount of money if you make minimum wage and take the bus to work because your disposable income is very likely negative.

That is where some of the frustration does indeed emerge - one vivid example involved refusing a $500 procedure from someone driving a brand new Tesla.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#346

Post by burntsushi »

Exuma wrote: post #207
heyoni wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of my favorite cats has a bad tumor and a 3 month expected life span. I found out a few days ago. I’m shattered and the thought of having to be in the room or not is just super depressing. I’ve never lost a pet before or even someone very close to me. I’m scared for how bad it’s going to hurt Part of me (most of me) wants to be there to feel the pain in the deepest way and not bitch out. To be there for the last…

I just did this for my cat Cauchy about 10 days ago. It was brutally difficult. But I was so glad ("glad" seems like a gross word in this context, not sure how to phrase it) I was there with him in his final moments and that he was able to die painlessly in my arms.

My vet had a "back door" entrance for these sorts of things. I took them up on it and I needed that.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#347

Post by snapetom »

chamakits wrote: post #25

When I was young, the first profession I said I wanted to be was a Vet. I was obsessed with it. I loved all animals, but dogs the most. Still do. Over the years of having my own pets at some point I realized I would be dealing with animals in their worst condition. Sick, injured, and suffering. I knew I would be bonding with animals I would rarely see and maybe even be responsible for putting them to sleep when the t…

You're also often dealing with people at their worst. I know of two vet clinics in my area have had to put up signs warning that they will not tolerate abuse and berating at their staff, obvious signs of intoxication, etc. How many businesses have to do this?

One of the first things my wife was told in vet school was, "Most of you are here because you want to deal with animals and not people. In reality, if you are not good with dealing with people, you are not going to make it in this field."

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#348

Post by DoreenMichele »

"When I graduated in 2012, my personal student loan debt was at about $289,000. Despite a decade of payments, the total has increased because of interest, and right now it's at $460,000."

That alone is stressful, which in no way suggests other points being made here are unimportant.

I spent decades suicidal. After some health stuff improved, I'm mostly not anymore.

So I can't help but wonder if exposure to animal diseases might be a factor.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#349

Post by Fomite »

giantg2 wrote: post #169
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They also cut costs when they can. Metronidazole for colitis as an example - it’s not the standard of care for humans, but vets use it all the time because it’s wildly cheaper (cents vs $100s for vancomycin or $1000 for Fidaxomicin)

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#350

Post by rcarr »

fishyjoe wrote: post #242
rcarr wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it unhinged to post something on an active discussion site and then to refresh the page a minute or two later to see if anyone has replied? That's called having a conversation, there's nothing unhinged about it. There are no notifications on this site, if you want to have a conversation with someone you either refresh the page or you subscribe to the RSS feed of your comments. All you're doing is trying to def…

I'm not hoping to frame you as anything. You posted the multi-paragraph comment calling people who like animals "fucking militants" all on your own before I showed up. Getting that upset/irrationally mad at a group over some downvotes is what I find concerning. But yeah, apologies about the dig at you refreshing the page frequently. I'm having to do the same to check these messages.

> Getting that upset/irrationally mad at a group over some downvotes is what I find concerning.

Ok that I can understand. For context, a while back I shared my experience going vegan for an entire year here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33364191

I then got attacked for it and dragged into arguments I didn't really want to have by other vegans. And this similar behaviour has happened repeatedly on other threads to do with veganism, animals, the environment and other culture war topics. It is always particularly bad on anything that could be related to veganism.

I've seen this downvoting pattern happen so frequently now on both mine and other people's comments that it is becoming difficult not to see this as people with a targeted agenda, downvoting things they like with the hope of it getting flagged early and taken out of the conversation all together. Like if you look at the post history of one of the people I ended up in an argument with on on the link above, their entire history is solely dedicated to environmental activism and picking fights with people on these topics to the point that Dang ended up banning him:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=myshpa

It seems unlikely to me that, within a minute, five unrelated people out there all simultaneously read my comment, which in the grand scheme of things was pretty benign, and then decided to downvote it. And I keep seeing this stuff happening on threads that are related to culture war topics over and over again.

Here was another one of my comments on a culture war topic that suffered the same downvoting treatment that eventually had it's flagged status overturned by one of the moderators:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37577525

All I want to do is come online and share my experiences and stories with other people like I'm in a bar just chatting to people. I can and have told these exact same anecdotes in real life without getting attacked for them. It's one thing having a debate with someone on here about some tech topic but it really feels like a punch in the teeth when you share a deeply personal story, purely with the intention of hoping it helps enrich someones day, just to then get turn round and attacked for it. We don't do this to each other in real life, I don't get why people insist on making it different online.

Post reply on HN