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Stress Awareness Month 2025 – driving forward compassionate workplaces

Stress Awareness Month has been held annually, every April, since 1992. It aims to educate the public about the causes and effects of stress, promote effective stress management techniques, encourage open conversations to reduce stigma, and provide resources and support for effective stress management. 

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Mind Matters

This year, the theme of Stress Awareness Month is ‘#LeadwithLove’, aiming to encourage everyone ‘to approach ourselves and others with kindness, compassion, and acceptance, no matter the challenges we face’. You can find out more on the Stress Management Society website. 

Over the past five years, we have all experienced changes to our way of life, and, at MMI, we take pride in driving forward compassionate and inclusive workplaces through our activities. These include: 

  • Launching a ‘Civility fundamentals’ course on the RCVS Academy.
  • Facilitating Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) courses, to support key conversations on mental health, for all members of the veterinary community.
  • Launching a new mental health research grants programme, including a key focus on occupational stressors, and their impact on mental health.
  • Attending and presenting at a number of veterinary conferences and congresses on key topics related to mental health and wellbeing.
  • Supporting the five-year RCVS Practice Standards scheme review, through providing input on mental health and wellbeing.

  • Supporting the new ‘Let’s talk adjustments’ campaign, with our Equity Diversity and Inclusion Team. 

     

In our daily lives, both at home and at work, we can all experience different types of stress. The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies stress as ‘a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives’.  

 

 

Whilst many of us may cope well, we know a prolonged state of stress can lead to emotional, mental and physical exhaustion, common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and physical illness such as heart disease and high blood pressure.  In Great Britain in 2023-2024, 16.4 million working days were lost to work-related stress, representing 55% of all working days lost to work-related ill-health. 

The RCVS Workforce Summit and subsequent Action Plan commit to supporting veterinary professionals at all stages of their careers. The Action Plan outlines seven key ambitions for tackling the issues contributing to workforce challenges. Ambition 2: Confidence, culture and recognition, Ambition 4: Welcoming a modern way of working and Ambition 7: Improving client interaction and communication all tie into managing stress in the workplace and creating positive working environments. 

We will be revisiting these ambitions in greater depth by hosting a series of workforce webinars later this year. 

In the meantime, we will also be sharing a range of resources and CPD opportunities via the RCVS social media channels. Be sure to check them out and feel free to share with your colleagues and friends. 

 

New guide 

To coincide with Stress Awareness Month, we have launched our new guide: Understanding & managing stress in the veterinary workplace (revised edition), written by Elinor O’Connor, Professor of Occupational Psychology at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. 

This guide provides advice to veterinary workplaces on evidence-based approaches to addressing work-related stress and supporting wellbeing. It is the first in a series of guides to be published within our Applied Mental Health Science series, aiming to support veterinary professionals and workplaces through evidence-based research in a number of areas. 

You can download it for free via our dedicated resource page. 

 

Our research  

At MMI, we aim to use evidence-based research to support the mental health and wellbeing of veterinary professionals in both a personal and professional capacity. Although there has been extensive research on stress in general, there is significantly less focussed specifically on veterinary professionals. 

We fund research that will have a direct impact on the mental health and wellbeing of veterinary professionals. By expanding the direct evidence base, we aim to enhance wellbeing and address the root causes of potential poor mental health. 

‘Occupational stressors (including trauma and burnout)’ is also one of our core strategic areas of focus in our new mental health research grants. So, if you’re a researcher and have an idea for a project that could help shed more light on stress within the veterinary professions, whether that be prevention, identification of stressors, or something else, we would love to hear from you. Find out more about our Discovery and Impact research grants on our dedicated research grants page. 

Some of our previously funded research included awarding funding to a research project focussed on the mental wellbeing and psychosocial working conditions of autistic veterinary surgeons in the UK.  

 

Further information and support 

Our charity partner RCVS Knowledge has recently posted a two part QI feature blog on stress in veterinary professionals. The first part follows a fictional vet team experiencing workplace stress and the second part covers some of the actions teams can take to improve team wellbeing: 

 

You may also find the below links helpful: 

You can also call the Vetlife helpline – available 24/7 to listen and offer a confidential, safe, and non-judgmental space. Call 0303 040 2551 or visit https://helpline.vetlife.org.uk  to register and contact anonymously via email.