Caring for animals can be highly rewarding for many veterinary professionals, but operating in high-pressure and emotionally taxing environments can significantly impact their well-being. At Zoetis, we recognize their invaluable roles caring for the animals we need and love. With a grant from the Zoetis Foundation, the Shanti Project Veterinary Mental Health Initiative (VMHI) is helping to increase access to mental wellness programming for veterinary professions. In honor of World Mental Health Day, Zoetis EVP and Group President, International Operations, Aquaculture and Global Diagnostics, Jamie Brannan, sits down with Dr. Katie Lawler, co-founder of the VMHI, and Dr. Scarlett Magda, founder and president of Veterinarians International, to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of supporting mental health in the veterinary community.
Caring for animals can be highly rewarding for many veterinary professionals, but operating in high-pressure and emotionally taxing environments can significantly impact their well-being.
At Zoetis, we recognize their invaluable roles caring for the animals we need and love. With a grant from the Zoetis Foundation, the Shanti Project Veterinary Mental Health Initiative (VMHI) is helping to increase access to mental wellness programming for veterinary professions. In honor of World Mental Health Day, Zoetis EVP and Group President, International Operations, Aquaculture and Global Diagnostics, Jamie Brannan, sits down with Dr. Katie Lawler, co-founder of the VMHI, and Dr. Scarlett Magda, founder and president of Veterinarians International, to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of supporting mental health in the veterinary community.
For more information on The Shanti Project visit https://www.shanti.org/
Jamie Brannan:
Hello, I'm Jamie Brannan, executive vice president and president, Zoetis International Operations and Aquaculture. Welcome back to my podcast, Wellness, where I get the chance to connect with Zoetis colleagues, the greater veterinary and animal health community and other experts about topics around wellbeing. From understanding the positive impact pets can have on our physical and mental wellbeing to learning how we can better manage stress at work and find a comfortable life balance, we are continuing the conversation about how we can better look after ourselves and support each other. Our veterinary customers are at the heart of everything we do at Zoetis, and supporting them means working on issues that matter to them both professionally and personally.
For years we've been working to raise awareness about mental health issues that impact the veterinary profession and by providing forums and resources to promote veterinary wellbeing and self-care. We work with industry partners, associations and vet schools on meaningful ways to help alleviate mental health challenges by vet professionals. One of those organizations is the Shanti Project and its veterinary Mental Health Initiative, which is supported through our Zoetis Foundation. The Veterinary Mental Health Initiative offers confidential and virtual services facilitated by doctorate level clinicians with specialties in depression and anxiety, grief and loss, work-life balance, trauma and suicide prevention and response.
And I'm so happy to welcome to the podcast one of the co-founders of this impactful initiative, Dr. Katie Lawlor, who has a lot of experience in understanding and supporting veterinarians who are struggling with mental health. When we were exploring how to approach this episode about caring for the wellbeing of those who care for animals, Katie suggested that we also include a veterinarian's voice to share further perspectives of what they're facing in their daily work, and I really couldn't agree more. With that, I'm also delighted to welcome Dr. Scarlett Magda to the podcast. Dr. Magda is the founder and president of Veterinarians International, an organization working to train and empower vets in ecologically sensitive regions around the world. She's also the founder of Vet Angels, a working emergency veterinarian, and the recipient of the 2023 AVMA Global Veterinary Services Award. Scarlett and Katie, thank you for being here today. Katie, let's start with you.
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
Yes.
Jamie Brannan:
Why don't you tell us more about the Veterinary Mental Health initiative and its mission.
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
I would be honored to, and thank you so much for having me today. We know that veterinarians and veterinary medicine professionals have historically been underserved with regards to tailored mental healthcare and support. And by addressing the specific stressors in this community, we're able to help the doctors and staff who diligently and compassionately care for animals and their humans. So, the VMHI offers evidence-based, culturally competent and multilevel services to support the mental health and wellbeing of veterinarians and veterinary medicine professionals, and we expressly address the scenarios and the issues that vets and their staff face every day. So, we offer two services. We offer professionally facilitated peer support groups and individual one-on-one sessions. And as you said, they're all facilitated by doctorate level mental health professionals. And thanks to the generosity of the Zoetis Foundation, last year we were able to serve 120 vets and 40 vet med professionals through our support groups and 80 veterinarians through our individual sessions. So, we reached 240 professionals altogether last year. And in the first half of this year, I'm honored to share that we've already engaged with 125 veterinarians and 25 vet med professionals through our services.
Jamie Brannan:
That's amazing. I don't suppose any of us want there to be a need for more service because obviously it is showing the challenges that our vets and the professionals have, but giving that level of support and to be there for the vets at what is a really challenging time, we all understand about the workforce pressures we're seeing in the vet industry at the moment, so to be there to support is amazing. I was interested in the group versus the one-to-one, and obviously that's a personal choice, but how are you seeing the groups express themselves? Are they buddying up? Are they keeping in contact through the group work?
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
Absolutely. So, I think the biggest tell for us is that we've had vets come... There's absolutely no limit on how many groups one can participate in. And we've had vets come back for 2, 3, 4, 5 groups, and we were able through the Zoetis Foundation to offer 16 groups a year. We've seen them come back time and time again. We tailor the groups to make them very dynamic and address the issues that are important in real time to the participants. And so some of the discussion topics we've seen, especially this year, are things like reframing imposter syndrome, building resilience, understanding and managing when a traumatic event happens in your practice or your hospital.
We see a lot of vets come to us from shelter medicine or from rescues, so dealing with animal cruelty and neglect. And we offer, like I said, evidence-based coping skills. So, things like effective communication with your colleagues, setting healthy boundaries with your clients at work. And so to see these groups come together, we close them... They're typically six weeks in length, and after the second week we close them to really build that comradery and trust and just try to create that very safe and warm space. We say, "Come as you are. Just show up and we'll take it from there."
Jamie Brannan:
Yeah, the importance of being able to be yourself. You cannot underestimate it. It can't be a show, in case you are worried about your peer group.
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
Well, that's exactly it. We try to create a very genuine and authentic space. We say, "Please, if you're comfortable, just use your first name or your nickname so that you can show up and speak to the concerns that are very important to you with your colleagues, with your peers, with people that get it and that understand and have been in very similar situations themselves." When you see it come together, it is such a trusting and very beautiful kindhearted experience.
Jamie Brannan:
That's amazing. Scarlett, as a veterinarian, how do you view the importance of the work that VMHI is doing or other initiatives like this in the industry?
Dr. Scarlett Magda:
I think it's lifesaving. Having witnessed vets as well as nurses in every practice that I've worked in face severe, debilitating mental health issues, from depression to neuroticism to suicide, as well as seeing our vets internationally struggle with this. This is a urgent crisis that needs critical attention. It's an honor to be here on this podcast, and I thank you both for your efforts thus far, which are truly commendable and much needed. The more we can raise awareness about these critically needed efforts, the more lives we can save.
Jamie Brannan:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I've spoken to some people in the industry about the level of awareness and I've had some feedback that we're getting to a good level of awareness, but we need to make sure we have the right level of support. I don't think you can ever have enough awareness on this, personally. I think that always needs to continue. But then having the right level of support, that's probably the challenge we have. Awareness is great, but will someone actually make that step to pick up the phone? So, how do you see, Katie, when you look at some of the specific challenges that the vets are facing, how do you see that the VMHI can continue and help address some of these really specific challenges?
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
The data does show us, the research shows us, that veterinarians and veterinary technicians do suffer from an increased of mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression, compared to the general population. I think educating pet guardians on this is a very first important step. Veterinarians and their staff choose these professions because they value caring for animals, yet they're often on the front line of abuse and neglect cases. They're often asked to euthanize animals that might be saved if greater resources, time, finances, supplies, assistance were available, or if they had been brought in for treatment sooner. They make life and death decisions and the corresponding actions on a daily basis.
When they try to uphold healthy boundaries, sometimes there's intense pressure to say yes to working longer hours, to treating more animals, taking on additional roles within the organization. We know that being subject to the financial aspects, limitations of the organization, is difficult. There's often not formalized treatment for this in vet school, how to talk about finances, and they have to return to work after losing their own companion animals. So, giving the space to talk about this with people who are going through, with professional colleagues who are dealing with the same situations, really the evidence shows us that this can dramatically improve mental health.
Jamie Brannan:
Yeah, there's a couple of things you mentioned there. One for me that's always resonated for me is people go to vet school because they want to be a vet. They end up having to be a vet and a business person, right?
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
Absolutely.
Jamie Brannan:
And that's a level of pressure. And having those conversations with pet parents, pet guardians, about the costs of treatment or the roots of treatment, that's not always easy, especially as we see this acceleration with the human/animal bond.
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
It is astounding to me doing my training on inpatient units in the hospital for the years through my doctorate program, never in my wildest dreams it would never be asked of me to talk about their insurance or their financial options while delivering mental health treatment, and vets and their staff have to do this on a daily basis with these pet guardians. And that is so difficult. I can only imagine.
Jamie Brannan:
Yeah. There was another point you made that it resonated so much with me. It was in terms of how we educate the pet guardians. So, that education I think is hugely important. So, Scarlett, with your experience working in ecologically sensitive areas and also emergency medicine, you must see some fairly unique challenges for the vets in these areas.
Dr. Scarlett Magda:
Most definitely. So, we're talking about remote regions where access to an injured animal can be challenging. So, Sri Lanka had a fuel shortage and there was a certain allotment of gasoline per entity. So, they had to decide which animal was going to get rescued or not, which was a horrifically challenging decision to make. The community came together and would give their gas credits to the wildlife officers so they could go rescue the animal. It was amazing to see the people come together. The amount of trauma on a daily basis is unfathomable. We're dealing with human wildlife conflict. There's competition for food and land. So, everything that Dr. Lawlor has mentioned is absolutely essential.
At the same time, I think we need to look to nature. Nature has so many healing modalities, and I encourage people to put their feet in the soil anytime they can. And I have my nurses now going out on their 10-minute breaks to just recharge in nature. We have to look to nature for solutions as well as Western practices. And so myself, I had three nervous breakdowns between March 2020 and April of this year. And it was nature that brought me back to center, and it was sacred plant medicine that enabled my wellbeing to occur. And fortunately, there's now scientific studies being done on these very sacred plants. And I think the more we can collaborate with Western and traditional approaches, the more we can really come together and heal. We cannot forget about nature.
Jamie Brannan:
Yeah, I think sometimes when we talk about the challenges we have in the veterinary profession at the moment, I think everyone tends to go to small animal clinic, busy with lots of cats and dogs going through. And it's fairly similar if you look at the US or Canada or the UK or Germany. When you start to look at the breadth of veterinary medicine and you're working in different cultures, different parts of the world, working with exotic animals, farm animals, but then understanding that we are all individual human beings and what's right for me may be very different for somebody else. And understanding how we can build out approaches and become more personalized, whether that's through connecting with nature, connecting with other human beings, connecting with animals, and how we can get bespoke and broaden our minds on this, I think is going to be incredibly important for us. How do we take this sort of thing globally though? It's great, and I love this conversation and I wish there was millions of people that will listen to this, but how do we try and think about how we take these different approaches globally?
Dr. Scarlett Magda:
Well, for us, we strategically build our programs to have government involvement and permission to work. And so in Kenya, for example, we have the Laikipia County government, the University of Nairobi Vet School, the Kenya Wildlife Service, all under one coalition. And so we are able to share information that reaches national level very easily. And those are the systems that I think are imperative where we get away from the silos that we used to operate in, where entities we're not communicating with each other, and we come together and we collaborate. And that is the approach Vets International takes so that we minimize waste and we increase efficiency and we have maximum impact. So, I think the fact that we're having this conversation is a monumental first step. Second, we continue to collaborate with the entities and individuals who are providing help. And so what Katie and I have done is put together some of our individual offerings that we're aware of and bring them together into one space.
So, we have a lovely vet who I happened to go to vet school with offering AVMA accredited retreats in Costa Rica for wellness. And Katie is actually going to be there in November doing her first retreat with them. And Katie, can you just remind the name of the entity? Is it Puro Vida Wellness Retreats?
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
Yeah.
Dr. Scarlett Magda:
Okay. So, Pure Life Wellness Retreats. Puro Vida in Spanish is Pure Life, and it's the slogan for Costa Rica. So, what better title could you have? So, I'm very much a collaborator and somebody who believes in a holistic approach. Because how we're designed as human beings. I commend Zoetis and Shanti for what you've started. It's so encouraging to hear, and it's our hope at Vets International that we can scale these efforts and do something really beautiful together to save more lives and help more vets live healthier lives.
Jamie Brannan:
Katie, I'm just interested, I want to go back to the retreat. And you are going to be at the retreat, and this sounds like an amazing initiative. Tell us a bit more about how this is going to work.
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
Well, of course, and I think the beauty of this initiative that we've created with the Zoetis Foundation is that it can be scaled to meet the needs. We offer our groups, we offer our individual sessions, and then we've been asked, it's really increased, especially in the last year, to give these evidence-based presentations on topics that are really tailored to the participants that are there. So, I think for this retreat we're giving a presentation on procrastination and perfectionism in vet med. Also, dealing with these traumatic cases that veterinarians are seeing, and again, those effective communication skills. We really want to give effective coping skills, effective tools that people can use almost immediately.
And so we're honored to be there. And there's so much evidence-based. As Scarlett was saying, when we meet with our peers, when we validate these topics, when we bring them to light... And one of my favorite things to say as a psychologist is, "What's on the inside is always going to find a way out, and talking about them is the healthiest thing we can do, followed by exercise and self-care." And so I just want to highlight that our health... To me, mental health is physical health. It's all health. But involvement in these types of activities, retreats, groups, individual sessions have been shown to result in enhanced physical health, reduced stress, decreased mood symptoms, reduced engagement in avoidance strategies of which there's so many vices in today's society, the full spectrum, and then a lower risk of self-harm and suicide.
These types of retreats, these types of groups, they really normalize and validate occupation-related stressors in addition to the types of things that vets and their staff take home with them at the end of the day. Protective factors. Going on a retreat, engaging in one of our groups really encourages asking for help and discovering what other vets have done in similar situations. We know about disclosure. Sharing your concerns helps us make sense of what we're going through and reminds us that we're not alone. And then finally, I think these retreats, these groups, this initiative, the community engagement... When you participate, you're giving back to your professional community via your commitment to the current members, but also as these groups grow and expand to serve the needs that are constantly dynamic, constantly changing of this professional community.
Jamie Brannan:
So, what can we do to help? I know we've talked about the Zoetis Foundation and our support to Shanti and how we're getting this moving, but what do you want to see from companies like Zoetis moving forward? How can we play a role to help other organizations shape this?
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
I think it's been extraordinary that you've brought this to light. You're such a trusted voice in the community, and by naming all the issues, all the concerns that we've talked about today, you've let people know that it's okay. Unfortunately, the stigma of seeking mental health services still exists, especially in the veterinary medicine community. I cannot tell you, especially with the more experienced vets, that it is still very much a, I'll use a quote, these are not my words, but I've heard them from more than one vet, "Pull yourself up by your bootstrap. Suck it up, buttercup. You knew what you were getting into." And that's not the case. How could you possibly?
Like has been mentioned here before, you go into this because you love caring for animals and there are so many aspects that you could not have foreseen. And so I think what's so beautiful and so important clinically about the Veterinary Mental Health Initiative is that it is that first step into getting the mental health support, and again, mental health is health, getting the support that you need. I would say if you've ever thought about joining a group or even starting with an individual session, we offer those because we do get a lot of high profile vets that would be easily recognized in a group, just give us a chance. We are trying to break down any kind of barriers, any kind of impediment to accessible care. All of our services are free thanks to the Zoetis Foundation, and we do everything to protect your confidentiality.
Jamie Brannan:
Look, I'm sure there could be other things we can do, and I think it's also we want to do all we can, but I think there's an industry piece here as well in terms of the wider animal health industry.
Dr. Scarlett Magda:
We're educating the pet owner, which is critical, and it can be done in a very gracious, kind way. Because they're in the emergency room. They're waiting. They're impatient. They're scared. They're going through so many emotions and sometimes it's necessary to let them know what's going on, not just behind the door, but in the profession in general. Those are the shifts that need to happen on a global scale, which I do think we can do strategically. Having the collaborative frameworks will allow the message to just spread the more that we shed light and wrap our arms of compassion around this and acknowledge that it is okay to have these illnesses.
I had three nervous breakdowns. I was in brain fog. I had imposter syndrome. The president of Veterinarians International, recipient of the 2023 AVMA Global Veterinary Service Award, me. I've been there. So, I am not embarrassed about what's happened to me. I appreciate the experience and the lessons. I think we can tackle this collectively with our hearts, our compassion, our perseverance. There's so much passion on this call. It was mentioned in the beginning, and that's what we need. We need our passion, our hearts to drive this. And it can really be the way. It is the way.
Jamie Brannan:
It is the way, right. And as you said, it's collaboration. It's the passion, but it's collaboration. I think the more time we spend talking about it, the more awareness we create, the more understanding and support we give to our veterinarians, but also the education to our pet owners, and we've not mentioned them much today, but also our farmers as well. I don't know where the time's gone. This has been an amazing conversation. I'd love to hear just some closing thoughts. If there's any messages that you think that we haven't got across in this conversation, anything else we need to make sure we share.
Dr. Katie Lawlor:
I would just share, please give us a chance. These treatments, these coping skills that we can offer or recommend you to if a higher level of care would be appropriate, are highly, highly effective. If you went to your doctor and you had a heart condition or you had diabetes, they would never tell you, "Gosh, if you were just stronger, you could get through this." There's so much that we can do to help. And we are doing everything on the mental health side, on the psychology side, to make this, as an environment, non-intimidating, kind, warm, welcoming. Just give us a chance, just one chance, to see what we can offer you because there's so much that we can.
Dr. Scarlett Magda:
Thank you, Katie. So beautiful. I would like to echo that and say if there are any vets or farmers or veterinary nurses out there whose bodies are raising alarm bells, please, please, please listen to those alarm bells and start seeking validation and help. We recognize we feel the pain, and we're here to get through this together.
Jamie Brannan:
Dr. Lawlor and Dr. Magda, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. I think we could have been here for two hours, but I'm conscious of both of your time. I really appreciate your insights and also the messages that we can get out there on this critical topic. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you both so much for your time today.
Thanks for tuning in today for this important conversation. I'm so proud of how Zoetis is working to support mental health programming in veterinary professionals through organizations like the Shanti Project, and it was impactful to hear from Dr. Magda's firsthand perspectives as an emergency veterinarian working in such challenging environments. If there's one key message that comes through, I hope it's that any vet professionals who hear this conversation will be encouraged to ask for help if they need it. You're not alone. If you want to learn more about the support the Veterinary Mental Health Initiative of the Shanti Project provides, you can find it at shanti.org. That's S-H-A-N-T-I. Thanks for joining today, and until next time, stay healthy, safe, and be well.