Mental health & wellbeing in equine vets - Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons

The veterinary profession has disproportionately high levels of depression, stress and anxiety. Over the past few years, there has been an increasing focus on trying to address mental health issues amongst equine vets, with a strong emphasis on developing their awareness of coping mechanisms to help build resilience. Much of the emphasis of this work is on helping younger vets adjust from life at vet school to life in practice, which can be a challenging time. The objective for developing the 'Mental Health and Wellbeing Amongst Equine Vets' animation was to start a broader conversation within the profession of how to cope with the realities of life as an equine vet, building on the work that has already happened within the mental health and wellbeing area. We wanted to communicate that perfection is neither possible nor desirable and to provide pragmatic suggestions of how equine vets can best manage a stressful situation, encouraging them to accept it, learn from it and label it as an unusual ‘bad day’ not a ‘normal day’.