Veterinarians die by suicide at rates far higher than the general population. Male veterinarians are 2.1 times as likely, and female veterinarians 3.5 times as likely, to die by suicide compared to other Americans. No single cause explains this. Instead, a combination of workplace stressors, emotional toll, financial pressure, and one critical factor unique to the profession converge to create an extraordinarily high-risk environment.
Access to Lethal Means Changes Everything
The single most important factor distinguishing veterinary suicide from suicide in other professions is access to pentobarbital, the drug used to euthanize animals. Veterinarians work with this substance regularly, know exactly how it works, and can obtain it without difficulty. Among veterinarians who died by suicide in one study, 25 percent used pentobarbital. The numbers are even more striking when broken down by gender: 64 percent of suicide deaths among female veterinarians and 32 percent among males involved pharmaceutical poisoning.
Here’s the finding that matters most. When researchers at Auburn University removed deaths involving pentobarbital from the data, veterinarians no longer showed elevated suicide rates compared to the general population. This doesn’t mean the profession’s psychological burden is imaginary. It means that people in crisis who have immediate access to a highly lethal method are far more likely to die on their first attempt. Someone who reaches for a less lethal method is more likely to survive, get help, and recover. Veterinarians often don’t get that second chance.
The Emotional Weight of Euthanasia
Performing euthanasia is not a peripheral part of veterinary work. It is routine, sometimes happening multiple times a day, and it carries a psychological cost that accumulates over years. Veterinarians who euthanize animals five or more times per week have significantly higher rates of suicidal thoughts. Researchers have suggested that repeated exposure to death may create a kind of habituation, where the psychological barrier to ending one’s own life gradually erodes. Some have described this as a form of “self-euthanasia” in the minds of veterinarians facing unbearable distress.
Beyond the act itself, euthanasia creates what psychologists call moral distress. A veterinarian’s legal obligation runs to the pet owner, who makes the final decisions about treatment and euthanasia. But the veterinarian’s moral obligation is to the animal. When an owner requests euthanasia for a treatable condition, or conversely refuses to euthanize an animal that is suffering, the veterinarian is trapped between what they believe is right and what they’re required to do. This ethical conflict doesn’t resolve after the moment passes. Researchers describe “moral residue,” a chronic form of distress that lingers and builds with each new incident. Over a career, it can become a persistent source of psychological injury.
Burnout and Compassion Fatigue
Veterinary medicine is physically and emotionally demanding in ways that aren’t always visible from the outside. The profession has occupational illness and injury rates nearly three times those of physicians. Veterinary house officers commonly spend 11 to 13 hours in the clinic on a weekday, with roughly a third reporting to work six days a week and another third working all seven. That translates to average workweeks ranging from 55 to over 90 hours for trainees. Even in private practice, small animal surgeons average 40 to 49 hours per week, with academic surgeons logging 50 to 59.
These hours fuel two related but distinct conditions. Burnout is the state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that comes from a chronic mismatch between job demands and available resources. It builds slowly and erodes a person’s sense of competence and purpose. Compassion fatigue is different. It combines burnout with secondary traumatic stress, the psychological toll of absorbing other people’s grief and pain day after day. Veterinarians comfort distraught pet owners through illness, death, and difficult decisions, then move immediately to the next appointment. Traumatologist Charles Figley called compassion fatigue “the cost of caring,” and defined it as deep physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion from sustained caregiving. In veterinary medicine, understaffing makes both conditions worse. When practices don’t have enough technicians or clinicians to cover illness or absorb surges in patient volume, the gap between what needs to happen and what’s possible becomes a constant source of moral distress.
Financial Pressure
Veterinary school is expensive, and the salaries on the other side don’t always match. The average debt-to-income ratio for new veterinary graduates was 1.4 in 2024, meaning their student debt was 1.4 times their expected annual salary. That’s actually an improvement: throughout much of the 2010s, the ratio regularly exceeded 2.0. Still, more than 42 percent of 2024 graduates had ratios of 1.5 or higher, and about 12 percent owed more than 2.5 times their anticipated income.
This financial strain shapes career decisions in ways that compound stress. New graduates may feel locked into high-volume practices to service their debt, even when the pace is unsustainable. The pressure to see more patients, generate more revenue, and keep costs down can conflict directly with the desire to provide thorough, compassionate care. For some veterinarians, financial stress becomes the tipping point that transforms chronic dissatisfaction into crisis.
Why Women in the Profession Face Greater Risk
Women now make up the majority of veterinary students and a growing share of the profession. They also face disproportionate risk. Female veterinarians are 3.5 times as likely to die by suicide as women in the general population, compared to 2.1 times for male veterinarians. An earlier study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that female veterinarians have a higher prevalence of several key risk factors, including depression, suicidal ideation, and prior suicide attempts.
The reasons are complex and likely overlap with broader patterns of mental health in women, but the access-to-means factor is especially pronounced. Nearly two-thirds of suicide deaths among female veterinarians involved pharmaceutical poisoning. Women in the general population tend to use less lethal methods, which is one reason men typically have higher suicide completion rates overall. In veterinary medicine, that pattern is inverted by the availability of pentobarbital.
Client Hostility and Social Media
The relationship between veterinarians and pet owners has always involved tension around cost and care decisions. But social media has added a new dimension. In 2014, Dr. Shirley Koshi, a veterinarian in the Bronx, died by suicide following a sustained campaign of online harassment. The conflict began over a custody dispute involving a cat that Koshi had treated and adopted after it was abandoned in a park. The former owner launched online attacks and organized demonstrations outside the clinic, driving away business. Combined with financial damage from a flood at her hospital, Koshi became severely depressed. Her death drew national attention to cyberbullying as a specific threat to veterinary professionals.
Cases like this are not isolated. Veterinarians regularly face negative online reviews, social media campaigns, and accusations of greed when clients are confronted with treatment costs. The emotional toll is amplified by the fact that most veterinarians entered the field out of deep compassion for animals, making public accusations that they don’t care particularly damaging.
What’s Being Done
The profession has begun to confront its mental health crisis more openly. Not One More Vet (NOMV), a nonprofit founded in response to the epidemic of veterinary suicides, now runs an online peer support forum with around 40,000 members. The organization provides anonymous peer-to-peer support through a platform called Lifeboat, offers lectures and workshops on mental wellness, and works to reduce the stigma around seeking help. NOMV also runs a practice certification program and support grants for veterinary professionals in need.
Survey data from the profession shows that about one in six veterinarians has contemplated suicide, with psychological distress as the strongest predictor. Notably, nonveterinarian team members at veterinary practices (technicians, receptionists, practice managers) report serious psychological distress at twice the rate of veterinarians themselves, suggesting the problem extends well beyond those with a DVM. Roughly 20 percent of these team members experience serious psychological distress, compared to about 10 percent of veterinarians and roughly 7 percent of employed adults overall.
Restricting access to pentobarbital remains one of the most discussed interventions, given the Auburn University finding that the profession’s elevated suicide rate effectively disappears when deaths involving that drug are excluded. Safer storage protocols, two-person access requirements, and inventory tracking have been proposed or adopted at some practices, though implementation varies widely. The logic is straightforward: if the most lethal method is harder to access in a moment of crisis, more people survive to get help.