“Welcome to Hell” – The American Prospect

Mars, Inc., is best known for making chocolate bars. But it also owns the most pet hospitals in the U.S., and workers say the conditions are toxic.
by Jarod Facundo, Brian Osgood
July 20, 2022
5:30 AM
This article appears in the August 2022 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
Vanessa Gutierrez of Passaic, New Jersey, loved all animals, but maybe horses the most. She nurtured that love through several summers working as a counselor at a horseback riding camp. With her social media posts dotted with hashtags like #SavingAnimalsOneAtATime and #AgirlsBestFriendWillAlwaysBeHerHorse, she was destined to move into animal care.
Gutierrez loved to prepare the welcoming boards in the hospital rooms, adding the names of the pets who would be seen on a given day. But during her three years at VCA Veterinary Specialists of Connecticut, the tone of her posts took a noticeable shift.
It might have been the pandemic, which thrust immense pressure upon every veterinary worker in the country. The lockdown led many families to fill their lives with pets, increasing the need for health services without adequate resources at pet hospitals to meet the increased demand.
But Gutierrez’s bouts of anxiety and depression seemed to go beyond pandemic-induced stress. In June 2021, she walked away from VCA Specialists of Connecticut, describing the company as “the most toxic place I have ever worked & I feel so much better now that I’m out of there!”
More from Jarod Facundo
That improved mental state did not hold. On October 27, 2021, Gutierrez died by suicide.
A story she told a month earlier on her public Facebook page may offer some clues as to why. While still working at VCA, Gutierrez went missing from her family for days and was eventually hospitalized for suicidal ideation. When she returned to her job, she found a disciplinary “No call/No show” write-up from her manager, for missing work.
Despite Gutierrez insisting she gave her manager a doctor’s note and that she was listed on the FBI’s missing persons list, VCA still asked for more information about the absence. Gutierrez said that security camera footage would show her physically handing the note to the manager, but the manager claimed to have never received it.
As a last resort, the company told Gutierrez that, regardless of her condition, she was in the wrong for not notifying the company that she would not be at work. “I’m sorry that I didn’t think to stop in the middle of my suicide attempt to call and let Management know that I would not be making it in for my shift,” she wrote.
In her post, Gutierrez said she emailed VCA president Todd Lavender on several occasions to report her concerns. Instead of responding to her, Gutierrez alleged that Lavender forwarded everything to VCA’s HR vice president Maria Druse, who was one of the people Gutierrez named in her messages. “That showed me that either you didn’t even bother to read my emails or you just didn’t care,” she wrote, weeks before her death.
Six days after her death, Gutierrez’s Facebook page was updated with an invitation to join a private group for current and former VCA employees called VCA Employees for Vanessa, to “demand justice for her within the company.” The group, later renamed Justice for Vanessa, currently has 303 members.
The Prospect learned about Vanessa’s story through veterinary professionals who were in close contact with the Gutierrez family following her death. They and the Prospect attempted to reach out to the Gutierrez family for an interview. The family did not respond.
A photo from Vanessa Gutierrez’s public Facebook page. She died by suicide last October.
THE SOURCE OF SUICIDAL THOUGHTS can be difficult to decisively pinpoint; it’s never the result of a single event. But according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 90 percent of suicide victims had a diagnosable mental-health condition at the time of their death. In other words, with the proper resources and support networks in place, suicide is preventable.
One common factor in many suicides is stress. And to be sure, veterinary medicine is a pressure-cooker profession, requiring a high tolerance for graphic trauma, just like the human medical field. “I’ve seen extraordinary, unimaginable [animal] suffering,” one veterinary worker who requested anonymity said. “We see what first responders see.” And because many employees on the front lines have a deep connection to animals, having to deal with that suffering day after day can weigh heavily.
The costs of such conditions are borne largely by the newest entries into the profession. According to 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the median age for veterinary assistants and technicians is 26.7 and 31.8 years old, respectively. Women make up 84 percent of all veterinary assistants and 82 percent of all technicians.
Male and female veterinary technicians died by suicide at a rate that was 5.0 and 2.3 times greater, respectively, than the general population.
However, while the trauma of pet care looms large in the lives of the young women who experience it, interviews with veterinary professionals identified the parent company of VCA, Mars, Inc., as the greater source of their anguish. Ten employees who worked at Mars facilities across the country, many speaking anonymously due to concerns over retaliation, described how issues like understaffing and tensions between workers and management made a physically and emotionally taxing job increasingly untenable. Furthering this bitterness is the feeling among many workers that their love for animals has been exploited to push them to accept unbearable working conditions, often at the expense of their mental health.
Several workers said that conditions in their workplaces became so bad that they considered taking their own life. When they expressed to management that they had been experiencing suicidal ideation, these workers stated that their mental-health concerns were treated dismissively. They found in Mars not an ally but a source of excessive strain.
That tracks with the social media traces Gutierrez left about her job with VCA. She relentlessly described an exhausting and toxic work environment, exacerbated by an uncaring, hostile corporate culture that imposed severe psychological distress, even after she left the company.
A 2019 study on the veterinary profession reported that male and female veterinary technicians died by suicide at a rate that was 5.0 and 2.3 times greater, respectively, than the general population.
Several posts in online Reddit communities such as r/VetTech also describe struggles of mental health and toxic work conditions across the profession. And technicians and assistants share stories about working conditions in private Facebook groups. Liz Hughston, a licensed veterinary technician and president of the National Veterinary Professionals Union, who has served as an administrator for several private groups, told the Prospect that “based on the countless experiences relayed to me by their employees and our members, Mars appears to be focused solely on profits … workers are mired in cynicism and helplessness.”
In a statement, a Mars Veterinary Health spokesperson said, “We are committed to taking a holistic approach to supporting our Associates’ wellbeing—particularly combatting systemic mental health challenges faced by veterinary professionals—and fostering a culture of safety to help ensure a future where people and pets are thriving.” The spokesperson said that “out of respect for privacy,” they would not comment on Gutierrez or other current or former employees named in this story.
The allegations contrast with the stated intentions of Mars, Inc., a privately owned company typically known for candy brands such as M&M’s and Snickers that is also the largest employer of veterinary professionals in the United States, with over 100,000 employees worldwide. Mars Petcare reported $18 billion in revenue in 2020, according to Statista. In June, Mars, Inc., made Poul Weihrauch, the head of its global pet care business, the new CEO.
The move into veterinary care came out of Mars’s business in pet food, and it was furthered through a series of rollups of other pet care chains. A 2017 purchase of VCA for an estimated $9.1 billion was among a flurry of veterinary acquisitions over a 15-year period.
In July 2021, a month after Vanessa Gutierrez left the company, Mars Veterinary Health North America announced a $500 million “multi-year investment” in employee mental health, to promote “thriving careers, workforce diversity, and sustainable change across the veterinary profession.” In a press release citing “the evolving needs” of the profession, the company’s president, Doug Drew, said that after “considering feedback from more than 10,000 Associates, we are investing in programs that further enhance their health and well-being.”
But the testimony of Mars’s own workers paints a less sympathetic picture.
IN 2014, MORGAN VANFLEET JOINED Seattle Veterinary Specialists’ facility in Kirkland, Washington. When she began there, SVS was an independent practice. “Veterinary medicine used to be a trusted profession,” she said. “When I started there were few corporate practices.”
But shortly after she started, SVS was purchased by BluePearl, a veterinary conglomerate. And on October 9, 2015, BluePearl executives announced to their employees that they would be joining Mars Petcare. The merger was touted as providing “unprecedented opportunities for growth and support.”
Over the course of her employment with BluePearl, VanFleet worked at four of its locations in the Seattle area: Kirkland, downtown Seattle, North Seattle, and Renton. But after the Mars deal, day-to-day life on the job worsened.
VanFleet was an emergency room/intensive care unit supervisor at the Kirkland facility, though she reported to two other managers. Despite most facilities scheduling workers for 8-to-12-hour shifts, VanFleet said she normally worked 14 or 15 hours. She said that in one instance she worked a 21-hour shift; understaffing made it impossible for her to leave.
The stress was psychologically reinforced by comments from management, according to VanFleet. She was once told by a supervisor, “You’re never going to make what a nurse makes.” Indeed, average wages for vet assistants and techs are $29,780 and $36,850, respectively, even though they could have supervisory duties and high-pressure responsibilities. A study published in 2019 found that median wages of assistants and technicians did not keep up with the cost of living, even in metropolitan areas where pay for veterinary assistants and technicians was highest.
Though such long shifts could potentially violate wage and hour laws, according to Hughston, state veterinary medical boards are more concerned with adequate licensing or investigating cases of fraud and theft than labor standards. Additionally, the medical boards generally do not mandate patient-to-provider ratios at vet facilities, something that could help prevent understaffing.
In 2014, before the Mars acquisition, VanFleet said she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that causes permanent damage to the nervous system. The next year, she was diagnosed with a seizure disorder, which she cannot confirm is directly related. Instead of being able to make the 30-minute commute to the Kirkland facility, VanFleet was told she could no longer drive so long as she had seizures regularly occurring. The bus to Kirkland and back home took two hours. Eventually, she applied for a transfer to BluePearl’s facility in Renton.
According to VanFleet, she was given the impression in the interview process that she would be able to leave work when her shift ended. Instead, the same understaffing issues led to her again staying for hours. Management chalked up the uncertainty to unforeseen emergency surgeries, but VanFleet insisted that such emergencies, like at any hospital, were common and should have been factored into staff head counts.
The transfer to Renton did not improve VanFleet’s mental state either. She was written up for leaving on time, when her shift technically ended. When she notified a surgeon about an uneven caseload that would cause her to stay more hours than she was scheduled, VanFleet walked away, and the surgeon followed her into a utility room. As the surgeon questioned her about why she was mad in the first place, VanFleet experienced a panic attack. She said, “That evening I nearly completed suicide.”
In a separate shift, while she was at a computer finishing a case and beginning the next one, she experienced shaking symptoms that meant a seizure was soon to come. Her last memory was falling out of her chair, hitting her head on a dog kennel to the right side of her, until EMTs arrived on scene and evacuated her from the facility.
Following the seizure incident, she communicated to management that she needed time to recover, but when they stopped responding to VanFleet’s emails and phone calls, she realized she no longer had a job. “I was fired for having a seizure disorder,” VanFleet alleged.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the exact cause of multiple sclerosis is unknown. But VanFleet alleged that, after leaving BluePearl and obtaining a few months of medical treatment, her symptoms slowed and her seizure disorder stabilized. She can now drive herself freely.
VanFleet blames Mars for her physical condition worsening. “Your health deteriorates because you’re so mentally ill,” she said, explaining that she’s seen in others the physical manifestations of the psychological stress while working for Mars, Inc.: chronic fatigue, weight gain, depression, anxiety, self-harm, and substance use disorders.
Asked about BluePearl, VanFleet was blunt: “I never want to go back.”
LINDSAY SMITH STARTED WORKING at a Veterinary Specialty Hospital of the Carolinas in 2017. A year earlier, Mars had purchased the North Carolina facility. Smith initially thought she had found a workplace where she’d be treated like a valued member of a “little family,” committed to a goal that unites many veterinary care workers: a passion for helping animals and their owners. She said that the facility didn’t feel overly corporate and operated with a degree of autonomy.
But in late 2019, through corporate restructuring, the facility was designated as a BluePearl specialty and emergency medicine facility. The little family started to change. Current and former Mars employees who spoke to the Prospect said that, after a corporate takeover, pay was often cut, qualified workers with years of experience were classified as low-skilled, and staffing was not adequate to handle the workload.
“I would work 17, 18-hour shifts due to lack of staffing and because I had a 200-mile round-trip commute, I would stay at the clinic a lot. They had a room the overnight doctor could sleep in,” Smith told the Prospect. “I regularly got told that this was not acceptable and that if I made the decision to stay late and to not go home that I would have to get a hotel room. I really felt like management was deflecting back onto me instead of accepting the fact that they did not have enough staff to handle the workload and they were burning out everyone on the floor.”
Workers said that feelings of neglect, and exploitation were common features at Mars’s facilities.
Once, while handling a large dog, Smith’s head was knocked against a kennel, and she suffered a concussion so severe that she says she struggled to remember the names of her own children. Smith claimed that BluePearl’s insurance provider initially refused to cover the medical expenses from the injury, leading to several heated phone calls.
Incidents similar to Smith’s are a common feature of veterinary work. Another technician at a Mars facility who requested anonymity told the Prospect, “My hands are currently covered in scratches. I’ve had teeth come very close to my throat.” While working at an emergency facility in Maryland, the technician described a separate incident where a German shepherd bit her colleague’s abdomen, almost killing them.
Following Smith’s head injury, she said she had to wait almost three hours for a shift replacement to arrive before she was allowed to drive herself to the hospital, and then a substantial commute back to her home.
In the weeks of recovery that followed, management reached out on several occasions, not to ask if she was feeling better, but to insist that the facility was short-staffed and she was needed back at work. “I gave that place so much of my blood, sweat, and tears,” said Smith. “And they don’t even ask if I’m all right?”
THE FEELINGS OF DISPOSABILITY, neglect, and exploitation that VanFleet and Smith experienced were common features at Mars’s facilities, according to workers who spoke to the Prospect. As one veterinary technician who requested anonymity put it, even the most dedicated professional cannot compensate for an understaffed facility. The technician explained that six patients per technician used to be the maximum allowable number. Today, technicians often oversee 18 patients at once.
“You end up deceiving clients,” the technician said. For example, an animal’s vitals need to be checked every hour. At the quickest, one could check vitals in six minutes, but if the patient is on medications or an emergency arises, the process takes longer. This becomes mathematically impossible with 18 patients to monitor.
According to Good Jobs First, which maintains a database of corporate regulatory violations, in 2018 BluePearl received a $20,000 penalty for workplace safety violations for a facility in Tacoma, Washington. In 2021, a VCA in Fairfax, Virginia, received a penalty of $5,163 for violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. However, Hughston explained that public documents likely do not reflect the scope of occupational health and safety violations at Mars-owned facilities, because many workers likely do not have the resources or knowledge to file complaints.
Due to the understaffing, when a patient dies, it falls on the same workers who treated the patient to break the news to clients. Because of the intense emotions of telling a client their pet just died, it’s extremely difficult to discuss the financial arrangements, knowing that right after you need to treat your next patient.
At the end of every day, the technician and her co-workers asked themselves, “How many patients did we lose?” She continued, “I would cry driving home from work, sleep for five hours, then cry on my drive to work. You just sit in your car, cry for a bit.” Then she would be greeted during a shift change with lines like “Thank God, you’re here. Welcome to hell.”
Jandos Rothstein
A VCA animal hospital in Alexandria, Virginia.
Employees said that Mars would attempt to fill understaffing gaps with interns, who are typically either future professionals in training or veterinary medical graduates completing a yearlong residency. According to the Veterinary Information Network, an online community that provides resources for veterinarians, internships are not regulated by any organizational body, with no set workplace rules, hours, or minimum salaries. Mars employees said interns often worked as many as 18 hours each day.
The technician told the Prospect that a former intern they worked with at a BluePearl facility died by suicide months after their internship ended. Even though the intern’s death took place after leaving BluePearl, she felt like the company bore a measure of responsibility for her and her co-workers’ well-being because they worked so closely with the intern for months. “People are dying for this field. Something needs to change. I can’t bear the weight of losing another friend.”
Another worker who requested anonymity described a night shift where she was left alone for four hours. During that time, 12 emergency cases came in, half of which ultimately required euthanasia. Toward the end of her employment at BluePearl, she experienced what she called a “full-blown psychotic episode” and was hospitalized for five days for suicidal ideation. Afterward, management pulled her into their offices for questioning. “My doctor’s note should’ve been enough,” she said.
She described an environment where people would joke about how they’d rather be dead than show up for work. On her private Facebook page, she wrote a post disclosing her struggles with mental health. Someone on staff must have shared it with her managers, because management reached out to her. She said she was lectured about the importance of the company’s public image and why she shouldn’t post about her mental health.
The Prospect requested documentation of the incident, but the worker said that it’s common for such incidents to be resolved through “private conversations.” The worker alleged that this tactic prevents the creation of a paper trail.
“It’s gutting not being able to work by your values and why you entered the profession in the first place,” VanFleet said.
Following the mental-health episode, the woman’s psychiatrist told her it was unsafe for her to re-enter the field. She now collects disability payments for mental and physical health reasons. “Every time someone kills themselves,” she said as we wrapped up our phone call, “we all hear, that could’ve been me.”
ACCORDING TO VANFLEET, the company has for years told workers that their mental and physical exhaustion is “compassion fatigue,” something separate from burnout that relates to “the psychological cost of healing others.” While compassion fatigue may be recognized by the American Psychological Association, Mars frames compassion fatigue as a personal failing, VanFleet claimed, further weighing on her and her colleagues’ psychological stability. “I have been gaslit so much I believe I am the problem,” she said.
To VanFleet, a more accurate term for her and her co-workers’ experiences would be moral distress, given the difficult position of having to balance genuine care for patients with corporate revenue. In one incident, VanFleet elected to provide pain medication to a cat for free. Afterward, she was written up for not refusing treatment because the client couldn’t afford the procedure.
“It’s gutting not being able to work by your values and why you entered the profession in the first place,” VanFleet said. “If you exhibited human weaknesses, you could lose your job.”
A recent Facebook post by a former employee, Brandy Warnick, who worked at a facility acquired by VCA in 2019, speaks to this toxicity as well. For months, staff at the facility implored HR to do something about a doctor who had been brought on in July 2020 to help with staffing shortages. The doctor quickly earned a reputation for her callous treatment of both animals and fellow staff, once picking up a dog by the neck, lifting it off the ground, and screaming in its face in front of a customer. “[HR] consistently blew us off,” Warnick told the Prospect. “At a staff meeting I asked, ‘Is our mental health less important than hers?’”
In April 2022, Warnick drafted an email to the regional HR manager detailing her and her co-workers’ concerns, along with information about the doctor’s previous tenure, where she was allegedly at risk of losing her license over claims of animal abuse. VCA finally took action, but not against the doctor. Warnick was told to leave the facility, and says that VCA called the local police department to ensure that she left quietly.
“I have absolutely no idea why I lost my job … other than I wouldn’t support an abusive Dr and watch my staff be abused,” Warnick stated in the Facebook post. “This company is choosing profit over the mental health, well-being and fair labor for every staff member at that hospital.”
MANY WORKERS STATED THAT THE COMPANY IS AWARE of mental-health issues among its workforce. But early solutions amounted to little more than personal self-care tips, VanFleet said. For example, management encouraged workers to consider journaling, doing yoga, and meditating.
More recently, the company has implemented programs specifically to address mental health. In a video on Mars’s website, a veterinarian says that a two-day mental-health and first-aid training sponsored by the company gave her the tools she needed to support veterinary staff. “I genuinely feel that the training that I was given, and the support that I was able to give, helped [veterinary professionals] get better and back to work.”
The Mars spokesperson told the Prospect, “A support strategy needs to be multi-faceted, and we are on a multi-year journey to invest in and build layers of support.”
In 2019, Banfield, another Mars-owned chain, announced ASK (Assess, Support, Know), a “first-of-its-kind program” for suicide prevention. The two-hour training sessions, in partnership with VetFolio, a resource portal founded by the nonprofit North American Veterinary Community, were given in person to 19,000 employees a year later. The training is now available online.
A social worker featured in the training tells viewers, “You don’t have to be a mental-health professional to provide meaningful support to people in mental distress. All you need is the confidence and willingness to ASK.”
The training session advises participants to assess their colleague’s potential mental-health episode by asking open-ended questions. Next, they are counseled to offer support through “active listening and empathetic statements,” and get to know what resources and professional help is available, including suicide prevention hotlines, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the veterinary professionals support organization Not One More Vet.
The recommendations amount to asking vet staff to be conscientious. “ASK is not intended to be counseling or treatment,” the narrator states. “It is intended to offer hope through empathy, caring, connection, and by referring them to professional help.”
At the end of the training, the social worker tells viewers to consider using paid time off, to take breaks throughout the day, and to express gratitude with their fellow colleagues. Suggested activities to “recharge the mind” include journaling, mindful breathing, stretching and meditation exercises, and a short mind-wander walk. These are the same self-care tips that were part of Mars’s earlier efforts.
Hidden within ASK’s terms and conditions, VetFolio states that they and their business partners will not be liable for any damages sustained from using their services. In addition, there is a forced arbitration clause, blocking workers or their families from participating in a class action lawsuit against VetFolio.
Starting earlier this year, BluePearl and VCA associates could get treatment through the telehealth provider Lyra Health for up to 12 free sessions per year. Lyra Health asserts that 76 percent of VCA associates who used their services reported seeing improvements. But Hughston explained that there’s a strong stigma against speaking up about one’s mental health, because so many workers have been retaliated against or know of others who have. “Why would they sign up when they know what’s going to happen to them?”
For some of the workers, the full scope of the toxicity they experienced while working for Mars did not set in until they had found new jobs elsewhere.
Earlier this year, a former Lyra therapist named Megha Reddy told BuzzFeed that the company’s “productivity-based” bonus structure incentivizes therapists to churn patients out. Reddy was expected, as a part-time therapist, to have a new slate of patients every six to ten weeks. And with a cap of 12 free sessions per year, the discretion therapists would normally possess to decide if a patient no longer needs treatment is out of their control.
Patients are periodically sent “outcomes surveys,” and Lyra Health claims the data collected will be confidential, anonymized, and aggregated. Yet, buried within its HIPAA notice page, Lyra states, “We can use and share your [protected health information] to support our business operations.” Lyra Health’s terms of use also include a forced arbitration clause. For many of those who spoke to the Prospect, programs such as Lyra Health are just a way for the company to check off a box and say that it cares about its workers’ mental well-being.
In recent weeks, Mars has announced a new mental-health program for BluePearl facilities called “Dare to Self-Care,” which repackages the same tips that it promoted during VanFleet’s tenure and the ASK era. The Prospect obtained documents from the new program, which included suggesting to employees that they set boundaries between themselves and the animals they care for. The new program acknowledges that while there are limitations to self-care strategies, employees should still consider activities like exercising, eating well, spending time with friends, and taking vacations as a way to manage their “caregiving burnout.”
A veterinary professional from the West Coast who requested anonymity said that, while the new program is helpful in the individual sense, they still felt that the proliferation of self-care strategies bypasses how Mars, Inc., contributes to such emotional distress.
IF MARS ADMITTED THAT ITS WORKING CONDITIONS are impossible, it would be an acknowledgment of its role in fostering a stressful and often desperate environment. Workers suggested that Mars could maintain proper staffing of not just technicians and assistants, but of dedicated social workers for clients and employees. (The Mars spokesperson said they are expanding their network of in-house social workers.) In addition, its mental-health treatment could better match what workers endure.
But this is not how those who have worked with Mars characterize the company. “It’s set up for maximum profit,” one worker told the Prospect. “There’s no concern about how quickly they’re burning people out.”
One way to ensure proper staffing and ensure worker concerns are heard is through unionization. But those initiatives in the veterinary industry have struggled.
Some grassroots organizing has begun on social media, with workers connecting and sharing their stories and finding commonalities in their experiences. But after a successful organizing drive in early 2018 at a VCA clinic in San Francisco that received help from the local longshoremen’s union, VCA resisted bargaining on the initial contract, earning an August 2019 complaint from the National Labor Relations Board. A year later, VCA shut the facility down, stifling the union effort.
In May 2018, workers at a BluePearl facility in North Seattle voted 46 to 4 to join the National Veterinary Professionals Union. Among its first organizers was Morgan VanFleet, spurred by how BluePearl fired her after her seizure incident. But in June 2021, BluePearl announced they would be shutting down emergency services at the hospital. The North Seattle facility is now permanently closed.
Hughston told the Prospect that before the North Seattle closure, approximately 60 to 75 percent of the bargaining unit had left because improved benefits were offered at other nearby facilities. “Mars hammered the [North Seattle] practice relentlessly and bargained at the edge of legality.”
An additional hardship for organizing is that industry working conditions lead to high turnover rates. According to the American Veterinary Medical Foundation, as of 2016, most practices averaged 30 to 50 percent turnover, and given today’s tighter labor markets those numbers may have increased.
As the world’s largest practice owner, the way Mars treats its employees and clients shapes industry standards. Pablo Ruiz authored a 2019 study on corporate consolidation in veterinary medicine that specifically examined Mars Petcare’s outsized influence. Ruiz told the Prospect, “Large group, corporate-owned veterinary practices should be able to provide better working conditions and wages to their support staff, but this hasn’t happened to this day.”
For some of the workers, the full scope of the toxicity they experienced while working for Mars did not set in until they had found new jobs elsewhere. “I had become so stressed, so much less patient with others, when I was working there,” said one worker. “After leaving BluePearl, I was able to get off of my anxiety medication. I started having fun in my life again, started waking up happy and excited to see my kids.”
Many of the workers who spoke to the Prospect characterized Vanessa Gutierrez’s suicide as an entirely avoidable tragedy that epitomized everything wrong with the current state of veterinary medicine.
One veterinary technician who requested anonymity said that half the deaths by suicide she knows of in her life were by other veterinary professionals. The technician said, mournfully, “It’s paralyzing hearing about the suicidal ideation among your co-workers.”
Editor’s note: The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255.
Jarod Facundo is a writing fellow at The American Prospect. He has previously interned for The Nation, Dissent, the Prospect, and the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a graduate of Michigan State University’s James Madison College.
Brian Osgood is a reporter for Al Jazeera English based in California.
July 20, 2022
5:30 AM
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