The first time I understood that suicide was a problem in our profession was September 2014, not even a year after I’d left my academic job. I learned that Dr. Sophia Yin, a veterinarian I admired for her work in animal behavior and low stress handling, had died by suicide. Her death shook the veterinary community. Every image I’d seen of her, in her books, her articles, her website, was of a smiling, passionate veterinarian who wanted owners to understand their pets better. I found it hard to reconcile that image with someone who might have been living with a mental illness and struggling with thoughts of suicide.

More than a decade later, I’m still having this conversation, and I still think it’s one of the most important ones our profession needs to keep having. But how we have it matters as much as whether we have it. Repeating the wrong numbers, or oversimplifying a deeply complex issue, can do real harm. So before we go further: if you are having thoughts of suicide, please call or text 988 in Canada or the USA, or visit findahelpline.com for a resource in your country. This blog contains discussion of suicide.

Is There a High Suicide Rate Among Veterinarians?

Yes, and the research bears this out across multiple countries and decades. A systematic review published in Occupational Medicine in 2010 found that UK veterinarians died by suicide at a rate at least three times that of the general population, with self-poisoning and firearms as common methods. US data from 1979 to 2015 showed male veterinarians were 2.1 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, and female veterinarians were 3.5 times more likely. Among Australian veterinarians between 2001 and 2012, suicide rates were nearly double the general population’s, with pentobarbital overdose the leading method. Studies out of Canada, Germany, and Norway have found similarly elevated rates of suicidal thoughts. In fact, among more than 1,400 Canadian veterinarians surveyed, 1 in 4 had thoughts of suicide in the preceding 12 months, compared to an estimated 1 in 10 in the general population.

So the honest answer is yes: there is a real, well-documented, elevated risk. That part isn’t a myth.

Do Veterinarians Have the Highest Suicide Rate?

This is where the story gets more complicated, and where I think we’ve done our profession a disservice by not updating the narrative.

Older data does support the “highest of any profession” claim, at least for a time. A study in the British Journal of Psychiatry looked at occupational suicide rates in England and Wales from 2001 to 2005 and found female veterinarians had a suicide proportional mortality ratio over six times that expected. And a 2013 Psychological Medicine review of 30 years of UK occupational mortality data found that between 1979 and 1983, veterinarians had the highest suicide rate of any occupation. But by 2001–2005, none of those historically high-risk professions ranked in the top 30; rates had dropped substantially, and manual and lower-income occupations had taken their place.

More recent US data tells a similar story. When Dr. Jen Brandt, the AVMA’s Director of Member Wellbeing Initiatives, joined me on the Reviving Vet Med podcast, she walked me through 2021 CDC data reported in 2023: among men, the highest suicide rate by industry was 147 per 100,000, in aerospace product manufacturing, well above the estimated rate for male veterinarians of 42.1 per 100,000. Among women, the highest rate was in performing arts and spectator sports, above the female veterinary rate of 12.8 per 100,000.

So no, current data does not show that veterinarians have the highest suicide rate of any profession. That claim took hold after Dr. Yin’s death, when it was repeated widely, but as Dr. Brandt put it to me, “the data is simply the data,” and a lot of what circulated afterward wasn’t. Once inaccurate information is repeated enough, our brains tend to accept it as true even after it’s corrected. That’s part of why this matters: an oversimplified, alarmist version of our own story can become an identity, and it can harm the very people it’s meant to protect.

What Is the Suicide Rate for Veterinarians?

Based on the most recent available data, the estimated suicide rate for US veterinarians is 42.1 per 100,000 for men and 12.8 per 100,000 for women. Worth noting: suicide deaths are statistically rare compared to leading causes of death, so small changes in case counts can shift rates dramatically, and studies use different measures that aren’t always directly comparable. None of that changes the fact that veterinarians die by suicide at elevated rates. It just means the full picture is more nuanced than a single statistic can capture.

Why Do Veterinarians Have a High Suicide Rate?

There is no single answer, and offering one would be exactly the oversimplifying I’m cautioning against. What the research points to instead is a combination of factors.

Access to lethal means appears to be the biggest driver. A 2019 study in JAVMA examined the mechanism of death among 73 veterinarians who died by suicide between 2003 and 2014, and found poisoning was the cause in nearly half of cases, 77% of those involving pentobarbital, the drug used in euthanasia. When those pentobarbital deaths were excluded from the analysis, veterinarians were no more likely than the general population to die by suicide. Other research has found that veterinarians in practices where medications are left unlocked during business hours report more suicidal thoughts than those with locked storage, which is why so much of the current prevention conversation centers on how we store controlled substances.

Occupational stress, stigma, and isolation matter too, alongside the universal risk factors for suicide as described by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: an underlying mental illness (present in roughly 90% of suicide deaths, often undiagnosed), difficult life events, and previous attempts.

Attitudes toward euthanasia are more nuanced than they’re often given credit for. One Australian study of more than 500 veterinarians found frequent exposure to euthanasia may actually be protective against the relationship between depression and suicide risk, the opposite of what many assume.

I once heard a speaker at an AVMA Veterinary Wellbeing Summit describe suicide risk using the analogy of a ladder: each stressor can pull a person down a rung, and it’s rarely one factor alone that gets someone to the bottom. That framing has stuck with me.

Why Getting This Right Matters

How we talk about suicide has a documented effect on suicide risk, a phenomenon called suicide contagion. Rosie Allister of Vetlife has written about how careless media coverage can influence vulnerable individuals, and within our own profession, narratives that blame clients or treat our elevated risk as an inevitable, defining feature of the job can do more harm than good. Dr. Brandt was candid with me too: well-intentioned “be kind to your vet” campaigns, while coming from a good place, aren’t evidence-based solutions on their own, and alarmist messaging isn’t harmless just because it raises awareness.

The responsible alternative isn’t silence. It’s safe messaging: avoiding graphic detail, using language like “died by suicide” rather than “committed suicide,” resisting the urge to point to a single cause, and pairing every hard statistic with a next step toward help.

Where Hope Comes In

Not One More Vet was founded in 2014, in direct response to Dr. Yin’s death, and has grown into a global community of nearly 40,000 veterinary professionals offering free sessions through initiatives like its peer support programs and Veterinary Mental Health Support (VMHS). The AVMA released a Suicide Prevention Resource Guide in 2022 and offers free QPR gatekeeper training, a program that takes less than two hours and gives participants the confidence to recognize warning signs and connect a colleague to help, the same way CPR training doesn’t make you a cardiologist but gives you the tools to act in a crisis. In the UK, Vetlife offers a confidential helpline and, since 2022, dedicated postvention guidance for workplaces navigating the aftermath of a colleague’s suicide.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day, which feels like the right moment to say this plainly: prevention is possible, and it starts with ordinary conversations, checking in on each other during rounds, noticing when a colleague seems stuck, and making mental health part of the everyday culture of our workplaces rather than something we address only in a crisis.

I talked through much of this in far more depth with Dr. Jen Brandt on the podcast, in an episode called “Changing the Conversation About Suicide in Veterinary Medicine.” I also wrote a full chapter on this topic in my book, A Compassionate Calling: What It Really Means to Be a Veterinarian.

If this content resonates with you, or if you’re struggling yourself, please reach out. Call or text 988 in Canada or the US, visit findahelpline.com for a resource in your country, or lean on a colleague, a friend, or Vetlife or Not One More Vet if you’re part of the veterinary community. None of us should be navigating this alone.