T
o learn that among professional occupations, veterinarians are overrepresented in suicide
F E AT U R E
statistics globally is bad enough. To then discover that suicide rates for Australian
Valuing your vet
vets are some of the highest in the world is deeply disturbing. Dr Warwick Vale, President of the Australian Veterinarian Association (AVA) is blunt in his assessment: “At the moment it's at a crisis level, there's no doubt about
It’s something of a shock to learn that vets have
it. Practically speaking, we believe that
between two to four times the average rate of
in Australia we're seeing a veterinarian
suicide. AMANDA MAC spoke to AVA President Dr Warwick Vale about this concerning issue.
suicide death every 12 weeks.” Not all deaths by suicide are reported as such, so accessing verifiably accurate
