Finding Quality of Life
A Psychoeducation Group for Veterinarians
You went into veterinary medicine because you loved animals.
Because you valued the human-animal bond, and you saw the unique personalities and suffering of animals.
Many veterinarians have become increasingly aware of the toll this work takes on providers: crippling debt, pressures to increase productivity and profit, and witnessing and euthanizing animals in pain all exact a high toll. On top of this are the humans you interact with, whether companion animals’ human caregivers, equestrians, or stakeholders in farming, food production, and wildlife conservation, emotions can run high, and values come into frequent conflict.
The research has made it clear that veterinarians have dramatically higher rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and suicide than the general population. Many veterinarians, vet techs, and others in animal care communities now know this, but these issues remain largely invisible to the broader society.
Finding Quality of Life is a psychoeducation group I created for you: veterinarians.
The intentions for the group are threefold:
To provide support,
To offer psychoeducation, so you can better understand your own stress and trauma exposure,
And to give you actionable steps, exercises, and practices you can both use to manage your stress, and to think about how you might want the future to be different.
Finding Quality of Life will run first as a pilot group spanning three weeks, in the fall of 2023.
The pilot group will be offered to just three or four participants, entirely pro bono. This is material I have worked hard to bring together across multiple disciplines, and I want to both make this an offering to the animal care community, and hopefully to hear back from participants about what was and wasn’t helpful.