【原】兽医自杀率为何如此之高？

Amber看世界 2021-05-21

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Dr. Carrie Jurney is on the board of an online organization that works to prevent suicides.

凯莉·杰妮博士是一个致力于防止自杀的在线组织的董事会成员

It's called Not One More Vet.

这个组织叫做“不要再让任何一个兽医自杀”。

This isn't a mental health support group for veterans — it's for veterinarians.

这不是一个为退伍军人服务的心理健康支持组织，而是为兽医服务的。

Veterinarians are killing themselves in alarming numbers.

兽医自杀的数字非常的惊人。

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found male vets are 2.1 times as likely and female vets 3.5 times as likely to die by suicide compared with the general population.

美国疾病控制与预防中心发现，与普通人群相比，男兽医的自杀率是后者的2.1倍，女兽医的自杀率是后者的3.5倍.

The much higher rate for women is especially concerning as more than 60% of vets are women.

女性的比例要高得多，这尤其令人担忧，因为超过60%的兽医都是女性。

"I had 86 people in my vet school class," Jurney says.

“我的兽医学校班上有86个人，”杰妮说道。

"Graduating class of 2005. Three of them are gone. Died by their own hand."

“2005届的毕业生里，其中三个已经走了。死于自杀。”

There's a lot of stress in being a vet.

当兽医的压力是很大的。

First, there's the financial pressure to pay off a pricey medical school education — recent graduates are often more than $140,000 in debt.

首先，支付昂贵的医学院教育费用存在财务压力——刚毕业的学生往往负债超过14万美元。

And the median pay for a veterinarian in the United States is about $94,000 a year, which is good, but less than half of that for physicians and surgeons.

在美国，兽医的平均年薪约为94,000美元，这是不错的数字，但还不到内科医生和外科医生的一半。

Then there's the emotional strain.

此外还有情感上的压力。

Any given day in a veterinary clinic can swing between scenes of elation and anxiety.

在兽医诊所的每一天都可能会在兴奋和焦虑之间交替度过。

That was evident on a visit to Jurney's clinic in San Jose, Calif., last month.

这一点在上个月杰妮参观在加州圣何塞的诊所时就表现得很明显。

A couple bring in their huge Rottweiler to see Jurney.

一对夫妇带着他们的大罗威纳犬鲁本来看杰妮。

Reuben weighs 113 pounds.

鲁本重达113磅。

The previous night, he suddenly couldn't walk.

就在昨晚，它突然没法走路了。

Jurney and her staff have to put their arms around Reuben to lift him up to be examined.

杰妮和她的助手不得不一起用手把鲁本抱上去做检查。

The big brown dog's eyes seem to grow wide and bewildered.

这只棕色的大狗的眼睛睁得大大的，不知所措。

"I always say one of the great ironies of my career is I got into this because I love animals so much," she says.

她说:“我总是说，我职业生涯中最大的讽刺之一是，我最初选择这项工作，因为我太爱动物了。”

But "there are not a lot of animals that are ever excited to see me anymore.

但“大部分动物看到我都不会感到兴奋。”

You know they are often in pain and scared.

你知道它们经常是处于痛苦和恐惧之中。

And then we're doing weird things that they didn't get to consent to.

然后我们得做一些它们不同意的奇怪的事情。

“And ... especially in an emergency hospital like ours, there's not a lot of choice. You still have to get it done."

“而…尤其是像我们这样的急症医院，没有太多选择。你还得完成它。”

Reuben has an MRI.

鲁本做了个核磁共振扫描。

Jurney sees knots on his spine that might block his movement and orders immediate surgery.

杰妮看到他的脊柱上有个结，可能会阻碍他的活动，于是命令立即进行手术。

She uses a drill to slice through the huge dog's flesh and muscle and see what's pressing on Reuben's spinal cord.

她用钻子切开这只巨大的狗的血肉，看看是什么在压迫鲁本的脊髓。

Through a mist of bone and blood, Jurney sees small bits in Reuben's spine that have hardened around nerves.

透过一层模糊的血肉，尤尔尼看到鲁本的脊椎骨上有一些小块在神经周围变硬了。

The surgery takes more than an hour: lots of blood, bone and hot bright lights.

手术需要一个多小时:其间是大量的血液、骨头和炽热的强光。

But Jurney smiles as she slips down her surgical mask to phone the couple she calls Reuben's dads.

但当她摘下口罩给鲁本的主人打电话时，她终于笑了。

This time, it's good news.

这一次，手术情况不错。

"Hi, it's Dr. Jurney calling. We're all done, your baby's waking up," she tells the owners.

“你好，我是杰妮医生。我们都做完了，你的孩子醒了。”她告诉狗主人说。

"They were chronic discs. So those have been there for a while and I think they just scooched out just a little bit more. ... So we made things way way better than when we started. So I think we did what we needed to do tonight."

“鲁本背上是一些慢性的小增生。所以已经有一段时间了，它们只是有轻微的错位。...所以现在手术后情况大为好转。我想我们今晚做得还是不错的。”

Vets deal with disease, disability and death on a daily basis: "our average Monday morning," as Jurney puts it.

兽医们每天都要处理疾病、残疾和死亡问题:正如尤尔尼所说:“这就是我们周一早上的日常。”

"It's a very isolating profession. The hours are long. I can't tell you how many dinners with friends I've been late to or just missed entirely because a case comes in that needs me right now," she says.

“这个职业有点孤立。工作时间很长。有太多次，跟朋友约好了吃饭，结果临时需要我而不得不迟到甚至完全错过。”

"I've missed my own birthday dinner."

“我甚至连自己的生日晚宴都错过了。”

Many veterinarians practice alone, and sometimes they are the only one practicing for hundreds of miles, making it hard to take time off.

许多兽医都是一个人开业，有时他们是数百英里内唯一一个开业的人，这使得他们很难抽出时间。

It's a natural profession for introverts, says Dr. Nicole McArthur of Rocklin, Calif., the founder of Not One More Vet.

这份职业很适合内向的人，加州洛克林市的尼克尔·麦克阿瑟博士说道，他也是“不要再让任何一个兽医自杀”组织的成员。

"We're drawn to animals and then having to do a job where we are working with people," McArthur says.

“我们本来是被动物吸引，而这份工作又不得不与人打交道，”麦克阿瑟说道。

"The animals don't drive themselves here, they don't pay the bills."

“动物没法自己开车过来，也没法付医药费。”

Those people are often grieving, often angry.

而动物的主人往往很痛苦，很愤怒。

Both doctors say veterinarians they know have been targets of online trolling and threats from pet owners, and even strangers, who blame them for the death of a much-loved animal.

两位博士都说他们认识的兽医们都曾受到网上的恶意攻击和来自宠物主人甚至陌生人的威胁，他们都因为自己喜爱的动物的死去而责怪兽医。

In February 2014, Shirley Koshi, a vet in New York City, took her own life after a cyberbullying campaign against her.

2014年2月，雪梨·科什，一名纽约市的兽医，不堪网络恶意攻击而结束了自己的生命。

McArthur has quit her profession twice.

麦克阿瑟也曾两次想要放弃自己的职业。

"I had a day that I was working emergency and had three euthanasias within a 30-minute time span and they were all very emotional," she says.

她说:“有一天我在紧急情况下工作，在30分钟内实施了三次安乐死，动物主人都非常激动。”

"One I thought I was going to have to call on a welfare check to have police go make sure this person was OK. And yeah, I walked out. I was like, 'That's it. I'm done.' "

“其中有一位我想我都得给警察打电话让他们来保证他不会有事。是的，于是我辞职了，我感觉，'受够了，不干了。’”

Vets also have access to lethal medicines.

兽医们还可以拿到致死的药物。

It's part of the job.

这是他们工作的一部分。

"It's not a big leap to say, 'I'm a veterinarian who has chronic pain and I have chronic depression and my clinic is underwater and there's no end in sight,' " McArthur says.

“他们很容易陷入'当兽医真是漫长的痛苦，我长期感到沮丧，我的诊所让人窒息，简直看不到头，’”麦克阿瑟说道。

"And this is a kind of death that we can give ourselves. I get it. I totally get it. I've been there."

“而注射一下就可以了解自己。我明白这一点，我完全明白，因为我也是过来人。”

Vets who kill themselves are 2.5 times more likely than the general population to have used pharmaceuticals as the method.

兽医用药物来自杀的可能性是普通人的2.5倍。

The CDC notes that factors including issues Jurney and McArthur talk about — the debt, the long hours, the stress, the access to lethal drugs — put veterinarians at a high risk of suicide compared with the general population.

疾病控制与预防中心指出，包括杰妮和麦克阿瑟谈到的债务问题、长时间的工作、压力、获得致命药物的途径等因素，使兽医面临着比普通人群更高的自杀风险。

McArthur and Jurney's group, Not One More Vet, tries to give veterinarians support and a sounding board for the stresses of their work.

麦克阿瑟和杰妮的组织，“不要再让任何一个兽医自杀”正试图给予兽医们支持，同时给他们一个发泄工作中不满的平台。

The Facebook group boasts more than 18,000 members.

这个脸书组织已经增长到了18000名成员。