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Posted: 26th October 2023

Vets gather for mental health symposium
The Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Grant has funded six research projects into veterinary mental health.
The MMI event saw the final Sarah Brown grant awarded.

Veterinary mental health researchers have gathered for the Mind Matters Initiative’s (MMI) mental health research symposium in Manchester.

This was the initiative’s fourth biennial event, which saw 77 attendees meet to discuss topics including racism, suicide and suicide prevention, veterinary nurse mental health and workplace stressors for autistic veterinary professionals.

The event began with a welcome from Dr Kate Richards MRCVS, chair of the Mind Matters Initiative, who provided background to MMI and explained the proceedings of the day. This was followed by a talk from Dr Leah Quinlivan, research fellow and chartered psychologist at the University of Manchester, who discussed the care of people who have self-harmed.

The Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Grant was then introduced by Lizzie Lockett, RCVS’ CEO and founder of MMI.

The grant is in honour of Sarah Brown, a former RCVS Council member and veterinary mental health advocate who took her own life in 2017. Lizzie Lockett mentioned Sarah Brown’s work in the industry, and thanked her family for their ongoing support of the grant.

Ms Lockett formally presented this year’s grant to Dr Jackie Hargreaves and Dr Faye Didymus, researchers from Leeds Beckett University who will use their grant to study whether there is adequate mental health education for student veterinary nurses.

This will be the last of six research projects to be funded by the grant, each of which explore the progression of mental health education in the veterinary sector. Following Dr Hargreaves and Dr Didymus’ presentation, each of the previous recipients provided updates on their own projects.

These projects included Dr Kate Lamont’s research into how veterinary professionals in the farming sector cope, Dr Navaratnam Partheeban on solutions to racism affecting BAME people in the sector and Dr Kirstie Pickles on the workplace stressors that affect autistic veterinary surgeons.

After a short break attendees heard several ‘quick-fire’ talks, that gave researchers 15 minutes each to present their work. These covered a wide range of topics, and involved researchers from different stages of their careers.

Dr Kate Richards closed proceedings, saying: “Today has been about a vast variety of topics with presenters from veterinary backgrounds, veterinary nurse backgrounds, medical science backgrounds and social science backgrounds. I think the power and the huge synergies from cross disciplinary working is a real motivator for me.

“Just to see everybody in the room sharing and collaborating, learning from one another, I think, is extremely powerful.”

The day’s events, including talk abstracts and speaker bios, can be accessed here.

Image © Shutterstock



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