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“Managing our mental health” is the focus of Best Friends Podcast episode 131, published October 6, 2022. The episode description frames the conversation around the emotional demands of animal-welfare work and features psychotherapist Elizabeth Fagan, who works with companies and nonprofits, including animal-welfare agencies. It’s a useful starting point for the question the episode raises: what can people and organizations do about the strain of this work?
What the episode is about
The publisher describes a field where people may face sustained emotional strain, repeated requests for help, and difficult outcomes. Fagan joins the conversation as a psychotherapist who works with organizations, including animal-welfare agencies. The public episode description establishes that focus, but does not list specific coping techniques or provide enough detail to verify particular advice from the discussion.
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That distinction matters: the episode can be identified as a conversation about managing mental health in animal-welfare work, but its description alone is not a step-by-step guide. Specific techniques should not be attributed to Fagan without the full conversation to confirm them.
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A 2015 systematic review examined 12 studies spanning animal shelters, veterinary settings, biomedical research facilities, and other animal-related occupations. The review noted that studies used inconsistent terminology and definitions, including for occupational stress and compassion fatigue. Its findings therefore do not amount to one uniform measure of how all animal-welfare workers are affected.
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Within the studies reviewed, personnel directly engaged in euthanasia reported significantly higher work stress and lower job satisfaction. The review says these outcomes may be associated with turnover, psychological distress, and other stress-related conditions. Those findings apply to the populations studied; they are not a rate or diagnosis for every shelter employee.
Be careful with claims about suicide rates
The episode listing repeats a claim that a 2015 study found suicide rates among animal-welfare workers to be the highest of all professions, including law enforcement. The accessible listing does not identify that study, so its population, geography, and definition of “rate” cannot be checked from the description.
A CDC report published in 2018 analyzed suicide data from 17 states for 2012 and 2015. It found that the major occupational group with the highest rate differed by sex: Construction and Extraction for men, and Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media for women. Those findings do not validate a broad claim that animal-welfare workers have the highest suicide rate across professions.
A separate 2019 study examined U.S. veterinarians who died from 1979 through 2015. It reported proportionate mortality ratios (PMRs) of 2.1 for men and 3.5 for women compared with the general U.S. population; among veterinarians in clinical positions, the PMRs were 2.2 and 3.4, respectively. A PMR describes the proportion of deaths attributed to a cause in a defined group relative to a comparison population. These figures concern veterinarian decedents, not suicide rates for shelter staff or all animal-welfare workers.
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These sources measure different things in different populations. The CDC report concerns major occupational groups across 17 states; the veterinarian study concerns a specific profession and uses PMRs; the systematic review considers stress and job satisfaction across varied animal-related workplaces. They should not be combined into a single ranking of risk.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What organizations can consider
A 2021 peer-reviewed article discusses access to social workers in animal shelters as a possible strategy for reducing occupational stress. It presents an organizational approach, not a proven solution that works the same way in every workplace. The episode’s focus also makes room for support from qualified mental-health professionals, but its public description does not establish a particular program or provider.
For organizations, the practical implication is to treat emotional strain as a workplace concern that merits attention, rather than assuming individual workers should manage it alone. Any support plan should fit the roles and pressures in that organization and involve qualified professionals where appropriate.
About the guest and a dated perspective
In a University of Florida article published in 2015, Dr. Julie Levy, director of the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program, said that veterinarians have a higher risk for stress and suicide than other medical professionals. That is Levy’s statement in a dated article and concerns veterinarians; it is not a current comparison across all animal-welfare occupations. The same article quoted Levy saying self-care was not included in veterinary curricula at that time, which should likewise be understood as a 2015 observation, not a current audit of curricula.
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