Mental Health and Well-Being in Veterinary Professionals

Veterinary professionals face a uniquely challenging nexus of emotional, ethical and practical demands. High workloads, long hours and frequent exposure to animal suffering combine with financial constraints and client expectations to elevate the risk of depression, anxiety, insomnia and burnout. Ethical dilemmas, particularly around the decision to euthanase animals, can provoke moral stress and contribute to suicidal ideation. Gender and career stage further influence vulnerability, with women and early-career practitioners often reporting greater mental health burden. Despite growing recognition of these pressures, systematic measurement tools and evidence-based interventions remain limited. Emerging work highlights the importance of organisational support, resilience training and integration of coping-skill modules within veterinary curricula to foster well-being, reduce compassion fatigue and sustain professional fulfilment across diverse practice settings.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have extended understanding of early-career mental health by surveying veterinary students in a national population. Findings reveal that more than half exceed clinical thresholds for moderate depression and anxiety, with over three quarters reporting high stress levels. Insomnia and disordered eating were also markedly elevated compared with general population norms. Risk factors included female gender, older student age, low physical activity, excessive smartphone use and preferences for small-animal or wildlife specialisation. This work underscores the urgency of integrating mental hygiene education, stress-management strategies and peer-support programmes into veterinary training to mitigate emerging mental health challenges.

Mental Health and Well-Being in Veterinary Professionals publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in mental health and well-being in veterinary professionals across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Burnout: A state of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion arising from chronic workplace stress.

Moral stress: Psychological distress experienced when professionals feel unable to act according to their ethical beliefs.

Cross-sectional study: A research design that analyses data from a population at a single point in time to assess prevalence and associations.

References

1. Prevalence of mental health symptoms and potential risk factors among Austrian veterinary medicine students. Scientific Reports (2023).
2. Euthanasia of animals – association with veterinarians’ suicidal thoughts and attitudes towards assisted dying in humans: a nationwide cross-sectional survey (the NORVET study). BMC Psychiatry (2024).
3. Development, validation, and cut-off points for a questionnaire to measure sources of stress in veterinary medicine (SOS-VetMed). BMC Public Health (2024).
4. Stress and strain among veterinarians: a scoping review. Irish Veterinary Journal (2022).