Abstract
BackgroundWorldwide, veterinary practitioners and students are reported to be at higher risk of suicide, burnout, and depression compared to other occupational groups. The aim of the current study was to apply text mining and topic modelling analysis on scientific literature regarding suicide, burnout, and depression among veterinary practitioners and students to extract meaningful and synthetic information. These statistical approaches can be used to comprehend more in deep the phenomena involving veterinarians and veterinary students and to suggest the potential changes needed in admission to veterinary school, veterinary curricula, and post-graduation initiatives as preventive actions.ResultsA systematic search protocol was set up to identify scientific literature that published on the topic from 1985 to 2019. Two-hundred-eleven records were selected with abstracts/texts submitted to text mining and topic modelling analysis. Student, stress, work, anim*, and euthanasia resulted the most frequent terms. Topics modelling allowed to differentiate groups of words and papers in 3 areas of interest: 1) students’ difficulties encountered during their studies that increase stress and anxiety impairing their psychological health; 2) exposure to death and euthanasia as risk factor for mental health; and 3) need of support among those providing medical and health care, and of supportive group work to cope with such profession.ConclusionBased on the most frequent words included in the clouds and on the contents of the papers clusterised in them, some suggestions are interfered. It is emphasized that the veterinary curricula should include courses that prepare them early to deal with animal death and post-death grief of pet owners, to handle ethical dilemmas and moral stressors, to communicate with clients and staff members, to work in team, to balance work-family life and to promote individual and team resources. Specific courses for veterinary practitioners could keep them updated on their new roles and ways to handle them among functioning as potential feedbacks to monitor their psychological wellbeing.
Highlights
Worldwide, veterinary practitioners and students are reported to be at higher risk of suicide, burnout, and depression compared to other occupational groups [1,2,3,4]
Main limitations of the published studies on the topic of veterinary suicide, burnout, and depression, are the distortion of the distribution of the sample due to the self-selection effect of participants who voluntarily take part to cohort studies it depends on the instruments used to reach veterinary staff and students or linked to the case studies. It was aim of the current study to apply a different methodology, namely text mining analysis and topic modelling, to extract meaningful numeric indices from unstructured data gathered from a systematic literature review on suicide, burnout, and depression among veterinary practitioners and students considering in particular their mental state. This statistical approach can be helpful to represent the state of the art of scientific knowledge regarding this phenomenon in the perspective of pointing out the changes needed in the veterinary curricula, admission to veterinary school, or post-graduate specific initiatives
The main journal titles publishing on suicide, burnout, and depression among veterinary practitioners and students are listed in Table 1 with 56.4% of records published in these 6 Journals
Summary
Veterinary practitioners and students are reported to be at higher risk of suicide, burnout, and depression compared to other occupational groups. Main occupational difficulties are related to managerial aspects of the job, long working hours, heavy workload and job demands, poor work-life balance, difficult or challenging interactions with clients, clients’ expectations, and suspected patient/pet abuse by owners [12,13,14]. These specific reasons linked to attitudes and difficulties encountered by veterinary practitioners could not be straightforwardly related to veterinary undergraduate students. According to Hafen et al [17], high relationship quality can have a positive safeguard effect on veterinary students’ depressive symptoms, lower stress associated with balancing their school and home lives, less relationship conflict, better physical health, and improved ability to cope with academic expectations, while at the same time experiencing more stress from being behind in studies
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
