Nonsense About Veterinarian Suicide

Last year the CDC put out a nonsense "study" about suicide rates among veterinarians.

The press release screamed: "New Study Finds Higher than Expected Number of Suicide Deaths among U.S. Veterinarians"

Higher than expected?

Expected by WHOM?

Compared to WHAT?

The study is the first to show increased suicide mortality among female veterinarians. Female veterinarians were 3.5 times as likely, and male veterinarians were 2.1 times as likely, to die from suicide as the general population. Seventy-five percent of the veterinarians who died by suicide worked in a small animal practice.

Oh my!

But guess what?  This is not even bullshit; it’s a real lie. You see, a bullshitter does not CARE what they say or how it will be misinterpreted, while a liar KNOWS the truth, and is very careful to stay away from it.

And what truths did the CDC authors know and stay away from?

Well, for starters, they knew there is no evidence veterinarians have a higher than average rate of depression or mental illness.

Veterinarians are no more likely to be nuts than the average person.

The veterinary profession actually pays pretty well, has relatively high status, is not too numbingly boring, and has pretty good job security.

Sure a vet has to put down very sick and very old animals sometimes, but how is that a worse job than killing healthy livestock, which is a job hundreds of million of people across the world have done for thousands of years?

It's not.

How it is worse that shooting a deer or a duck which millions of Americans spend a huge amount of time in field and forest to do?

It's not.

In fact veterinarians are not even close to the top suicide rate.

You know who has a higher suicide rate?

• Farmworkers, fishermen, and forestry workers (85 suicides per 100,000).
  
  
• Construction and mining trades (53 per 100,000).
  
  
• Installation, maintenance, and repair folks (48 per 100,000).

This information is breathtakingly easy to look up, and everyone who studies suicide data knows it, so not reporting it is a lie.

And did the press corps bother to do an even cursory data check?

They did not.  Why let reality get in the way of a terrific headline?

So what's actually going on with veterinary suicide?

Here we come to the second CDC lie by omission.  It seems the veterinary suicide rate is exactly the same as the suicide rate for human doctors who are paid huge sums of money and who work in a very high-status field.

Guess why?

It's not because doctors are particularly depressed or mentally ill; they're not.

Again, like veterinarians, there is no evidence that human doctors are more depressed or more likely to be mentally ill than any other group.

So what's going on?

Simple:  both veterinarians and human doctors have easy and ready access to life-ending drugs that they know will not cause them pain or discomfort, and which can be expected to work the first time they are tried.

And what about all those female suicides?  

That’s the third lie by omission. In the "normal" population, men die by suicide 3.5 times more often than women, largely because women tend to have far less access to guns. But female veterinarians and doctors have exactly the same access to phenobarbital as their male counterparts, so suicide rates tend to be a bit closer to parity.

Which brings me to the data set behind this study; it's a bit... thin.

The TOTAL number of suicides looked at was 398 over the span of 35 years, of which only 72 were female over that same 35-year period. I will let you do the math. Suffice it to say that from the headlines you would think female veterinarians were topping themselves left and right. In fact, they're not.

So why the lies and disinformation?

Simple: everyone is chasing grant money, everyone wants to see their "research" published, everyone wants a headline, and everyone wants to be asked to speak at a conference. "Veterinarians face a high suicide risk, especially women" (Today show) is the kind of headline that does all that, and more.

To be clear, I do not think this is an accidental lie.  I think this is a lie that was intentionally ginned up for the veterinary trades echo chamber.

The goal here, right from the start, was to write a headline to abet the crimes of price-gouging, upcoding, and delivering medically unnecessary services.

The CDC press release announcing the study noted that it was being published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA). 

The authors of the study can say, "Look, we got published" and ask for more funding, and maybe appear at a conference or two.

The AVMA can position their members as overly compassionate people who are victims of pet owners who may be inducing "stress" by asking questions about such core business practises as bill padding, upcoding, price-gouging, and selling medically unnecessary goods and services.

Look I get it. The CDC folks need funding, the AVMA wants to shield their trade from too much consumer scrutiny, and newspapers want quick headlines to wrap around the toothpaste ads.

That said, the good new is the bad news is wrong: your vet is probably no crazier or more depressed than anyone else, and is certainly less likely to commit suicide than all those farmers, construction workers, and repairmen you passed on your way to their well-appointed and air conditioned offices.