The suicide rate in comparison to the general population will be given for each category. The goal of this project is to find what factors are most strongly leading to the suicides of veterinarians. Ultimately, the question that is being challenged is, what is causing suicide to take the lives of many veterinarians? How common is suicide in the veterinary profession in comparison to the general population? What method is primarily utilized by clinicians? Do different positions cause a higher chance of suicide?

This project will be reliant on the death records that took place in 1979 to 2015. These records were obtained from the AVMA’s obituary and life insurance databases. In this study, the exposure start data will begin at the year of veterinary school graduation for each individual.

A proportionate mortality ratio (PMR), (which is being used as a descriptive statistic) was calculated for use in this project. The proportionate mortality ratio is used to compare the proportion of deaths that were reported from a specific cause of death to the proportion of deaths from that cause in the general population in the US. In this project, suicide will be the specific cause.