A vet killed himself after becoming increasingly upset that customers with brand-new cars parked outside his surgery wouldn't pay to help their animals, an inquest has heard.
Dr John Ellis, 35, also believed that owners were "leaving it too late to come in" with their pets, meaning nothing could be done and "he was finding that destroying", his mother, Tina Ellis, told the hearing.
Studies and reports have shown that suicide and mental health issues are commonplace in the industry. A 2022 study in Australia found that nearly 70% of vets had lost a colleague or peer to suicide and about six in 10 had sought professional help for their own mental health. A separate study by the Australian Veterinary Association reported similar results, finding that about 67% of vets had experienced a mental health condition.
Vets in the UK are four times as likely to die from suicide as the general public, University of Southampton research found in 2010. Financial factors "play a part" in this trend, said the BBC, as do "the pressures and long hours" of the job, "expectations of pet owners" and "exposure to trauma and frequent euthanasia".
Some clients also accuse vets of malpractice, which is "very rare" in reality, Dr Julie Buzby, a vet from South Carolina, told the New York Post. She said although she understood that grieving pet owners were just "lashing out", this could be very hard on vets.
But veterinarians "often have their own money woes, too", explained the BBC, because veterinary school is "both extremely selective and extremely expensive", meaning vets have "large debt loads relative to their earnings". | 
