Philly’s IndeVets expands its peer support network
Philadelphia-based veterinary staffing agency IndeVets hopes a new partnership with mental health nonprofit Not One More Vet will provide a new option for veterinarians looking for help with mental health issues. Specifically, IndeVets plans to expand a peer support network for veterinarians dealing with emotional stress called “Lifeboat,” which originally started as a Facebook group. Veterinary medicine is a field with “very high pressure working conditions, [and] long hours,” said Marissa Brunetti, Chief Veterinary Officer for IndeVets, who added “We deal with people as well as pets . . . We deal with a lot of ethical challenges and moral challenges when dealing [with] and seeing pets that may not be able to afford care. We also have the highest debt to income ratio of all the medical professions.” Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that one in six veterinarians experiences thoughts of suicide, putting them at higher risk for suicide than their peers. In 2018, the CDC also found that female veterinarians were 3.5 times as likely, and males were 2.1 times as likely to die by suicide than the general population.
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