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Reflections on 2024: Key MMI moments and achievements 

It’s been a busy year for the MMI team. It marked the first full year of the new MMI strategy, with our small team operating at full capacity under the leadership of Rapinder Newton, our new MMI Lead, and Sam Hurley, our Senior MMI Officer. We said goodbye to our wonderful MMI Chair, Dr Kate Richards FRCVS, who remains a MMI Ambassador and welcomed our new Chair, Dr Louise Allum MRCVS.     

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Mind Matters

Although it’s impossible to capture everything that we’ve accomplished across the year, inspired by the 12 days of Christmas, we wanted to reflect on all that we’ve achieved. Warning: Don’t try and sing it. 

In the 12 months of 2024, the MMI team has: 

  1. Hosted three campfire chats, covering topics such as anxiety, allyship and LGBTQ+ mental health, and movement and mental health.
  2. Facilitated two research webinars, on compassion and veterinary wellbeing with researchers at the University of Surrey, and on SVN mental health education with researchers at Leeds Beckett University.
  3. Launched a new mental health research grants programme for 2024-28, to support researchers at all stages of their careers.
  4. Launched our first MMI RCVS Academy course on Civility fundamentals, working closely with the University of Aberdeen, and contributors of the ‘Keeping it Civil: a practical guide to managing incivility in veterinary practice’.
  5. Launched call for abstracts for our fifth veterinary mental health research symposium in 2025.
  6. Funded training for VetSupport volunteers and provided Vetlife with over £100k in funding.
  7. Supported the RCVS Neurodiversity event, which took a first step towards the development of guidelines, to support neurodivergent students on veterinary placements, in collaboration with the RCVS Diversity & Inclusion, Education, and Veterinary Nursing teams.
  8. Attended, presented and facilitated sessions at conferences across the UK and Europe, including (but not limited to): Association of Charity Vets Conference, BSAVA Congress, CAW Head Nurse Congress, ECVIM-CA Congress and Canmore Trust Conference. The topics we focussed on this year included civility, moral stress and injury, OCD/PTSD, thriving as a veterinary nurse, compassionate regulation, the value of mental health CPD, and strategic approaches to supporting mental health in the workplace.
  9. Facilitated training of 49 Mental Health First Aiders and 46 Mental Health Champions across the UK, including fully funding a MHFA Champion course for the Association of Veterinary Students (AVS).
  10. Sponsored new menopause wellbeing resources via the not-for-profit social enterprise ‘WellVet’.
  11. Sponsored a dealing with grief session by the Blue Cross Pet Bereavement Service at The Webinar Vet’s, Virtual Veterinary Congress.
  12. Delivered the ‘Mind Yourself’ CPD programme, with the charity ‘Two Roads’. 

We will be announcing our plans for 2025, which will include our fifth research symposium and MMI’s tenth birthday celebrations in due course. To keep up to date with the latest news and developments, please sign up to our newsletter via the MMI website.  

Don’t forget that if you need support, the Vetlife independent and confidential helpline is available 24/7, all year round on 0303 040 2551. You can also contact Samaritans 24/7 on 116 123 or by emailing [email protected] 

We love to hear from our readers and supporters. If there’s something you’d like to see more of, reach out to us at [email protected].