"The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3)."
Unlike doctors, vets euthanize animals every day. They're comfortable with the idea of a medically induced death. Ask any vet if euthanizing animals makes them uncomfortable and they'll tell you it doesn't bother them at all because they know they are ending the animal's suffering humanely.
On top of that, they have access to lethal drugs and know precisely how to use them, how to end their life quickly and painlessly.
Those two together make it very easy for me to see how a vet would rationalize suicide.
And I bet you rarely encounter awesome, happy pets. You might get the occasional cute puppy/kitty in for theirs shots (which the vet techs probably do), but I bet most of the pets you deal with are sick and/or dying.
Even if you grow callous to the death of animals, encountering the related human suffering must be miserable. I imagine the people most likely to take their pet to a vet are the ones most attached to them, therefore the most affected by their suffering and death.
The debt load of veterinarians is pretty staggering. Going to vet school is as expensive as going to medical school, but the pay is considerably less than an MD makes. It is not at all unusual for a vet to graduate with $300k+ in student debt, and to still be paying that debt down well into their fifties or even sixties.
You also have to deal with pet owners who are... let's say irrational. People seem to be even more willing to believe in homeopathy or nutritional fads or essential oils when dealing with their pet's health than with their own. The bills for veterinary care are not as high as for human medicine, except that most people don't have pet insurance and so pay much higher out of pocket bills than for their own health care, which makes the emotional stakes even higher. And owners will not hesitate to trash you on social media. The issue here is that to a much greater extent than doctors, veterinarians gain new patients by word of mouth and recommendations. So reputation is even more important than it is to doctors. A few ugly, well-placed reviews in Yelp or Facebook can do considerable harm.
All of this leads to an extremely stressful job, especially for younger vets or vets with young children.
Especially if they owners simply can't afford to pay to keep the animal alive.
Imagine being a surgeon and telling someone that their child needs their appendix removed, and the parent sees the cost and says "eh, let's just put them down".
The linked article goes through a list of qualitative factors which could be linked (though it does not seem to attempt to quantify their correlation).
I can see how being a vet could be a sad job, but my real question is why dentists are more suicidal than doctors. I would imagine the latter to be exposed to a lot more stressful/tragic situations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
"The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3)."