It’s rare that a week goes by when I don’t receive a Google alert telling me that another article has been published mentioning the staggering stats of suicide among veterinary professionals. Most of the reports are spurned by the news that veterinary hospitals have had to close or turn away clients due to an ever-increasing caseload accompanied by a lack of veterinary staff. However, they all end up mentioning the same recent study citing that male veterinarians are 2.1 times more likely and female veterinarians are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide compared to the general population. 

And while I believe it is important to bring public awareness to the struggles that veterinary teams are facing, what I want most is for veterinary professionals to shift their focus away from the statistics and towards the strategies that can be used to prevent suicide. 

In honour of World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th, I urge veterinary team members to arm themselves with tools for suicide prevention by taking one of the many free suicide intervention programs that are currently available online for veterinary professionals. As someone who has taken these programs (and some of them more than once), I can tell you that they have been game-changers for me in helping individuals (co-workers, clients, friends) who are at risk of suicide. 

These programs, while all structured somewhat differently, are designed to empower individuals with practical tools for recognizing when I person is at risk of suicide, asking the questions to determine their immediate risk, and linking them with appropriate resources so that they can get the help they need. 

I promise that you do not need to be a mental health professional or have a psychology degree to talk to someone about suicide. You only need to be a person who is courageous enough to ask some difficult questions and ultimately show that you care. 

Here are three programs for suicide prevention that are currently available online for veterinary professionals. I will highlight the main differences between these tools and invite you to make the commitment to completing one of them today. 

QPR Suicide Prevention Training

Also known as gatekeeper training, QPR teaches people outside of mental health professions, to recognize the signs that someone may be contemplating suicide. They provide strategies for having a conversation about suicide and guiding the person to seek professional help using the acronym Question, Persuade, Refer. This training is available on the AVMA website and is free to all members of the veterinary community (even those without an AVMA membership) including veterinarians, veterinary students, technicians, assistants, practice managers, and all other veterinary professionals. The training is provided through a series of videos and takes approximately 1 hour. 

ASK

This training program is an acronym referring to Assess, Support, Know. It was developed by the Banfield Pet Hospital and is similar to the same titled program designed for assessing suicide risk among children ages 5-14. The ASK Program was designed specifically to help veterinary professionals recognize and address emotional distress and thoughts of suicide in others. The training is offered via the VetFolio website and is free to complete once you have set up a complimentary VetFolio account. The training takes approximately 30-35 minutes and includes videos that include example scenarios with additional PDFs containing resources.  

Psychological First Aid 

If you are looking for a more general and comprehensive approach to assisting others in need of mental health support, Johns Hopkins University created a Psychological First Aid course that is available on Coursera. The course is designed to teach others to provide psychological first aid using the RAPID model: Reflective listening, Assessment of needs, Prioritization, Intervention, and Disposition. This model gives participants the skills to listen reflectively, differentiate between benign psychological reactions and more severe incapacitating ones, triage psychological crisis reactions (for individuals dealing with the aftermath of crisis events), mitigate acute distress, and recognize when to facilitate access to mental health support. The course content is available over a 5-week period with video and reading materials that take 1-2 hours per week to complete. 

With the appropriate knowledge and skills, suicide is 100% preventable. Please consider taking one of these free programs to ensure that others with mental illness or thoughts of suicide can be helped.

Should you or anyone you know be contemplating self-harm or suicide, please call 1-800-273-8255 (USA) or 1-833-456-4566 (Canada). International toll-free numbers for suicide prevention are also available at http://suicide.org/.