When Ben Schuster was a practising vet it wasn’t uncommon for him to euthanise a pet, then walk into the next room to vaccinate a new puppy without even taking a moment to regroup.
Growing up in Brisbane in a family with plenty of pets – dogs, rats, guinea pigs and birds – Schuster knew from the age of 10 that he wanted to be a veterinarian. So, he worked hard to make his dream come true, including five years of full-time study at James Cook University.
“It kind of has to be the key focus of your life for those years,” says the 31-year-old. “I didn’t have a job while I was studying. Everything revolved around becoming a vet.”
While completing a month-long clinical placement, a requisite to complete his degree, Schuster lived in a pub in rural Queensland. His room was $20 a night – a stretch to his budget at the time.
Today, Schuster misses the relationships he could form with clients and their pets while practising. He loved the impact he was making and how satisfying it was to improve an animal’s quality of life. Still, in 2020, after four and a half years as a working vet, Schuster felt completely burnt out and was going through a “mental crisis” about his career.
“It was a combination of things that led to me eventually leaving the veterinary industry,” he says. “The hardest thing of all is the emotional strain that you face as a vet.”
“You’re not just a medical professional, you are a counsellor. You’re guiding people through that process, you’re helping them grieve, you’re helping them accept when is the right time to say goodbye.”
While his decision to leave the career he worked so hard to attain was difficult, Schuster’s struggles are hardly unique. The Australian vet industry is facing a growing mental health crisis and workforce shortage.
According to research from industry body the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA), more than 66 per cent of survey respondents said they experienced a mental health condition.
Carly Wilson, a psychosocial risk consultant who consults the AVA, says the industry has always tackled high rates of mental health challenges. However, the issue has been exacerbated since the COVID pandemic, which saw pet ownership increase from 69 per cent in 2022 to 73 per cent in 2025.
There can be a lot of emotional manipulation , like somebody saying, ‘If you loved animals as much as you say you do, you would treat my dog for free’.
Carly Wilson
“We’re dealing with a job that is a high-pressure work environment that involves long hours, unpaid hours, on-call demands,” says Wilson. “It is also cognitively heavy and emotionally charged.”
“They way the veterinary profession is treated by the general public is really poor. You get high incidence in terms of aggression and unreasonable expectations – there can be a lot of emotional blackmail and manipulation that happens, like somebody saying, ‘If you loved animals as much as you say you do, you would treat my dog for free’.”
As a working vet, Schuster would euthanise two or three pets a week, which took a mental toll. If he arrived at work to see there was a euthanasia appointment booked at the end of the day, which they often were, it would dwell on his mind.
End-of-life care is a large part of the job and an example of the morally and emotionally challenging tasks that can increase psychological strain on vets, according to Andrew Arena, a postdoctoral research fellow in the workplace mental health team at Black Dog Institute. And certain working environments can increase the risk of mental health issues.
“Exposure to potentially traumatic events is another really important factor impacting mental health among workers, with certain jobs having a much higher rate of these exposures,” Arena says.
For vets in particular, there is also a risk of being exposed to secondary trauma, also known as vicarious trauma. “It refers to situations where someone learns about or witnesses the first-hand traumatic experiences of others. This is often seen in frontline professions … where repeated or extreme exposure to such events can result in PTSD,” Arena says.
In 2011, research found that veterinarians in Australia are four times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, and two times more likely than any other healthcare professionals.
The Sophie’s Legacy charity was launched in 2023 after 33-year-old Sophie Putland died by suicide in 2021 while working as a vet in Melbourne after the pressure of her job became too much.
In 2024, the charity lobbied for government policy and industry change to provide more mental health support for professionals and contributed to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the vet shortage established in June 2023.
Beyond these mental health challenges, Wilson says another component in the vet shortage is financial. “Everyone thinks vets are loaded, and they’re all driving around in their BMWs and Mercedes [but] you go into the job with a really high debt and most of the time you’ll probably be paid about $65,000.”
This was true for Schuster who, as a new graduate, earned around $63,000 a year, which was less money than his wife was making working in retail without a tertiary education. Still, he says his motivation to pursue the job was never financial.
Sam Haynes, owner and director of Sydney Animal Hospitals, has positions open – including one first advertised in 2024 – but doesn’t expect many applicants. “The number of people being produced for vet practice aren’t meeting the needs of the country,” he says. “There’s a lot of vet courses out there, but it goes to the attrition rate.”
The AVA says forecasting suggests there are currently only enough vets nationwide to meet around 60 per cent of demand.
In 2021, the number of students enrolled in Australian vet science programs totalled just 1890 – a significant decrease from the 2440 students enrolled in 2010. Haynes argues university intake could be better developed, so universities are selecting the best candidates for the job and not just the ones who get the right marks.
He also believes parental leave has a big impact on staffing numbers, with women constituting about 67 per cent of the industry: “In my experience, the family commitments are high. It reduces the number of people that are available for the number of hours.”
Schuster, who now works for a video game developer and has a three-month-old baby, says he doesn’t believe he could have juggled being a vet and his family. “When I am at home, it actually allows me to spend time with my wife and baby.”
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Abby Seaman is a digital producer and lifestyle writer at The Sydney Morning HeraldConnect via email.
