Hi there and welcome to Vet Chat, a new podcast for the veterinary profession brought to you by the webinar vet. We're gonna discuss all things from clinical cases to hot topical debates. I'm your host Ben Sweeney, and for the first time in my life over the episodes ahead of us, I'm aiming to listen more than I talk, and I can't wait for you to join me for the adventure.

Hi everyone, and today's episode of Vet Chat is a little bit different. First and foremost, we are testing the boundaries of the technology because we've got 3 fantastic speakers, all in 3 different locations using 3 different versions of the app. So hopefully it functions and works and we get to the end of this and everyone comes out unscathed, but we shall see.

And obviously for the first time in the series. We're looking outside of the veterinary profession for learnings from other spheres that can come in and benefit our own. So, you know, we know that mental wellbeing is a huge topic, and it's not just in our profession, but it does affect other professions and individuals globally.

You know, we're aware that as a veterinary profession, we've got the highest suicide rates of any UK profession, and I've certainly had low points in my own career. And, and in my personal life, but fortunately I've never found myself in those depths of despair that other colleagues have done. And indeed, you know, when I reflect on the matter, I look back at, you know, no fewer than 12 vets and nurses that I've known over the years that have taken their own lives.

But, but not all of the factors associated with our mental wellbeing are necessarily work related, and, you know, not all mental wellbeing is reactive. Indeed it can be preventative and proactive. So today I'm joined by Stephen, who's the founder of its Mental and some of the team there.

So Stephen, thanks so much for joining me and the guys. . Yeah, no problem.

First and foremost, just, you know, what is its mental? Right, well, it's mental is, a vehicle really, an organisation that provides a digital and a physical, most importantly, platform. For people to learn, about different therapies, different techniques, tools, to, to help them.

It's all about self-help, really, that's what we're trying to do. And we do this in a series of different ways. So the model is based on the five ways to well-being by the NHS.

So that's obviously being active, being mindful, gaining knowledge, connecting, and, and being kind. And, and using these type of things is, is all encompassing what we do. So we do this through a series of ways.

One is physical events, which is taking people into groups and, and, and try and break that stigma, get them out there, make that leap of faith to, to mingle with others and and connect. And we've done about a series of them now, which has been very successful. We're also with the team of, of Nick and Anna, we've been building, webinars, doing live webinars, for 4 week courses and 12 week courses to help people that can't make that leap into the physical connection, but want to learn, through a digital format.

We take them through all different kinds of things, tasks, and, and the main objective is to get them to move forward. To get them to achieve things that they not normally do, and, and really some of it's outside the comfort zone, but the whole point of that is, it's not too bad, once they, they're putting barriers up in front of them and they've done certain things may be, an activity they've not done before, or, a task on, on, on thinking about thoughts, and I think things like that which is outside the box. The whole point is, is, is getting to the other side where they're achieving little things in small steps.

And they look back at that and think this isn't too bad, and if they keep doing that over a series of time, they are going to progress. And, and obviously, you know, sort of the end goal in all of this is to improve someone's mental wellbeing. But of course mental wellbeing is almost the sort of buzz phrase if you like, at the minute, that many people are using interchangeably in so many different capacities.

But, you know, what, what is mental wellbeing to the three of you, you know, presumably it means slightly different things. To different people, so what do you see that as being overall? I'm Anna.

I'm the cognitive behavioural therapist. So mental wellbeing to me would be kind of giving people skills and techniques so that they can manage, their mental well-being so that they're equipped with techniques so that they don't engage with negative thoughts, but also not engage with maladaptive behaviours that keep the problem going. And then maybe actually Nick, if you could jump in next.

Yeah, and. I'm, well, a, a personal trainer and nutritionist, so specialise in fitness and food, basically. But, you know, I work with 1 to 1 with a lot of people.

I guess when it comes down to mental well-being, I put it down to people having an awareness and awareness of their kind of lifestyle, their choices, their behaviours, both actively with food, in and out of work. When they have an awareness, they kind of know whether their content or happy with where they're at with certain aspects. And I think once they, once Achieve that acknowledgement of where they're at, they can, they can really recognise if they're in a good or a bad place in that moment or with that specific thing.

OK, and, and Stephen, what are your, what's your take on it? I think, I think, to me, again, being experienced myself, of obviously having issues and and things with mental wellbeing and problems coping. I think the main thing is, you know, managing it on an everyday basis, being able to cope with the stresses, the modern stresses in life, the fast pace of life.

And, and, and coming to terms with it that things have changed over the last 10 years, and we aren't coping as human beings, and we need to put things in place, maybe technology may be doing tools and techniques, maybe it be just getting out there. We have become a cocoon society over the last 20 years, and I think that has a major effect on us. So getting out there, getting active, getting fresher and things like that, but having a plan to do that and helping people cope and move forward and manage it is really important.

Yeah, and I think, you know, you touch on a few interesting topics there in terms of like, you know, having a plan and getting out and doing stuff, but sort of anecdotally speaking for the majority of us in the veterinary profession, we are working long hours, we are invariably time poor, and you know, the, the stresses and. Strains of of sort of clinical life alongside personal life can often be sort of a little bit overwhelming. So what sort of, you know, we talk about coping strategies and things like that, but what, what sort of things can we do to, you know, sort of make that that well-being step more of a priority?

But my take on it is we're gonna, like with CBT, first of all, it's a lot about like knowledge and psycho education about recognising negative. Thoughts and the impact that thoughts have, but then the impact that behaviours have as well. So it's, it's about techniques such as, well, first of all, you've got to recognise the thoughts to implement any intervention with CBT.

And it's about techniques like thought challenging, and there's one called detached mindfulness and techniques so that people are aware that they don't have to engage with negative thoughts. And then the behaviour. Aspects of CBT is about looking at, what you value in life and looking at, behavioural activation and activity scheduling in accordance with what we do value, but it would be looking at, at, you know, what time is spent at work, what, what else we can do with your time and looking at time management and impact of activities on mood.

It is like awareness and then applying the techniques. With practise these techniques become kind of second nature. OK, but sometimes, obviously when you look at things as being, you know, an employee in a role, it, it, it's difficult to potentially sort of, you know, approach your boss and say, well, look, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with this or I'm struggling with that side of things and I need to have some time for me potentially.

Yeah, have you, have you got any sort of advice or guidance for people who are maybe, you know, faced with these kind of struggles who, you know, just need to know how to. Raise that topic of conversation because I, I dare say that, you know, not everybody wants to go to the full extent of having, you know, time off work, and going through, you know, potentially an extended course of CBT, but, but at the same time, you know, some people just, just need to make some tiny adjustments. Is there a good way for people to approach that with employers?

I suppose it's, I think any, I think a lot of the time we like my reading with there's all these unhelpful thinking styles that underlie all the different mental health problems and often people might read about what and kind of set other people's expectations of what they expect they should be doing. So often within a workplace, people feel that they shouldn't take lunch breaks and things like that. And when actually, kind of taking that time to kind of ensure that you've been in the present moment during lunch breaks and, and then kind of just take.

Techniques that we use to kind of switch off from work in an evening. So kind of reflecting on the whole values of what the kind of what the value in life as a whole, and then looking at, cause work becomes a massive part of it, and then other areas get neglected. So it can just be kind of raising it, because you find a lot of employers, they want the staff not to go off sick, so they will kind of I, you know, ensure that these people are getting a lunch break or whether, or that, you know, people kind of take work home or .

But it's often, there's the mind reading, so kind of approaching, kind of the boss or your supervisor, you know, often it's not often how you'd expect the conversation to go sometimes. Yeah, and I think certainly some practises are getting better at identifying the need to sort of be a bit more malleable in their working day within the veterinary sphere. I think one of the big problems.

We have is that as a service industry, you know, you can often get people rocking up and it is certainly not uncommon for vets and nurses to go without lunch and to, you know, not get breaks because the the the the, the inevitable chaos of the day to day, sort of take over, and one of those interesting topics that I know is a passion of yours, Nick, . It is nutrition. Now, having spent time as an equine vet and having spent time working on farms and in busy small animal practises, lunch has always been something of a fluid concept, and, you know, invariably when I was out on the road, you'd call into a Mackie's or you'd call into a KFC or, you know, whatever, sort of greasy spoon you were driving past.

And, and, and, you know, there's the, there's the common perception. Within the sort of general public that vets are all loaded and can go and get so on and so forth, invariably people don't have spare money in the veterinary profession because salaries are relatively comparatively low, so these options to get like these pre-made meal boxes and things like that don't exist for many people. So what, what can people do in terms of, you know, nutrition as a part of their wellness?

Well, it first starts with, it helps to know basically where, where that person or that individual, so we're talking about the veterinarians, where that individual wants to be, or what they want to take away from their food, for example. So if, if the goal is purely to eat, well, then everything's on the table, expensive, cheap, healthy, or unhealthy. But let's take, for example, then, that you want to stay in shape or you have, you want to lose a little bit of weight, do it in, do in your profession.

And then you're faced with these issues that you've just mentioned. The first step has to be for that individual to know where they need, where they stand on a calorie base. There's something called the Harris Benedict formula.

You can find it online. I won't bore you with the formula itself, but you can just search Harris Benedict formula up, and that will explain how you can find your calories. That you need to lose weight.

Now once you have this, it's about building or giving yourself the option, choice and knowing what fits into that number, so, I know you say about the, the whole greasy spoon analogy, but nowadays, what used to be cheap things like McDonald's and KFC, it's no longer cheap. You know, you're looking at paying 7 to 10 pounds for a meal now from these places, once you've got a meal deal, allegedly. And what used to be perceived as unhealthy, like meal deals at Tesco for 3 pounds, and now a lot lower in calories.

A lot of people have got onto a healthy, onto the healthy ban. Or what we perceive as healthy, which should be a lower calorie option, not necessarily the visual healthy food. We went through the avocado epidemic of 2016 where people were eating them like apples.

There's nothing low calorie about an avocado. It's about 4 or 5 times as calorific as an apple. It's actually as calorific, more calorific than a Mars bar if you have an avocado.

So we, we tend to follow what we perceive as healthy rather than recognising what's a good consistent and consistent option for us, which keeps us within a a calorie kind of target and through sticking to that calorie target, which can be done, believe it or not, through what we once perceived as unhealthy food like, convenience, chocolate bars, as long as we get the balance of smart food, which is, If you can't get a meal in in the afternoon, for example, there's a lot of myth behind, you have to have every meal of the day. You can make the day work for you. So once you have a number, like I spoke about the calories, if you have a daily target, you can actually aim to hit that target on the during the time period that suits you.

So if you have a bit more time in the morning and the evening, you can actually bank those calories and eat them where you have a bit more time management. Otherwise, it's a. About having the right consistent convenience in front of you.

So, preparation goes a long way, but preparation can be in a wrapper so long as it suits. So I think it's, it comes down to making acknowledging where you have better periods in your day where you can manage these foods, and then knowing what your kind of overall number of calories look like in your visual of food, and that in itself becomes healthy. It doesn't have to be green all the time.

So long as it fits within the number, it is healthy because it's getting you to where you want it towards where you want to be. So, time management first, find out where you can get the right foods and make the better decisions in. And once you've got that, you'll naturally build a a second nature kind of style of eating.

OK, and I think certainly, you know, if you were to look at sort of maybe just 3 quick tips that people could take who are looking at making positive steps. With their nutrition and the impact that that might have on their wellness, what, what sort of three quick tips would you be able to give people? First quick tip, would be once you have this number of calories, treat it like finance.

So for example, when it comes to money, we're always careful, but we're not necessarily careful with food. So once you know your calorie number, treat it like. The money you have in the bank.

So, overeating of calories is like overspending, for example, and banking your money and saving is like losing weight, for example, for example, and it's, you're banking those calories. So my first tip was, once you have this number, treat it like your finance, and you'll find that you manage the calories a lot better. The second tip would be, Don't always look for healthy food.

Look to the food that are foods that are lower calorie options. So when I said about you going to an avocado because you think it's healthy, if you just take a second to look at how many calories in an avocado, it's usually, let's say it's 200 to 250. Well, a Kit Kat's 100.

So, I don't know about you, but I'd rather have two Kit Kats if I wanted that value of calorie. But one Kit Kat would actually be halving the calorie of an avocado, and this is just an example. So awareness of lower calorie options, not necessarily healthy food, that can help people who don't have a lot of time to make what they see as a smart, a smarter decision with the food.

And finally, I guess the biggest tip can be. Not trying to eat in a way that you believe will suit you better. So if you are hell bent on eating 3 meals a day and snacking 3 times a day, if your job title or your lifestyle simply will not accommodate that, then accommodate it, make sure it accommodates the way that you can eat.

There's nothing wrong with eating, there's a lot more. At the start and end of your day and completely missing out of the centre, if that's gonna guarantee a lot more consistency for you, and in the long run you're gonna get a much better balance and build a better relationship with food, rather than chasing that lunchtime. Plan for it and eat a little bit more in the morning and a little bit more at night and leave yourself that space where you can focus on work and not worry about getting something in.

And now obviously one of the, the major things that we look at and and sort of almost the, the preconceived idea of what wellness is, is this term life balance or work life balance. But you know, what actually is that? Well, that's one of the areas which I've been focusing.

On, on, you know, these kind of webinars that we've been doing. Work life balance or life balance, it's about kind of looking at time management. It's about living life in accordance with values.

It's about, I suppose, being in the present moment as well and using those kind of techniques. And it's often a big factor in this kind of work-life balance comes from. We call them rules for living, these rules that people live by, and these are rules like I must or I should, or such as like, I must be successful, I must achieve.

I must be of the highest standard. That can creep into the effect, that really has a big impact on where people put the focus of attention when actually, when we start looking at the bigger picture and looking at what really is meaningful in life and what, you know, what Kind of brings, you know, this kind of, this good balance of life. It is about kind of putting attention and scheduling activities in, in other aspects of life.

And this like links really well with what Nick's been saying then about nutrition and food and exercise. And, and we start looking at kind of scheduling and kind of things that do fit with other areas of life so that life feels more rewarding, it's fulfilling, So yeah, it's a lot about time management really, and it's called behavioural activation and scheduling. OK, and, and obviously like, I mean there's some people out there who, you know, work almost is life and work is their sort of comfort blanket almost if you like.

And what about to those guys, cos of course, you know, there's almost this tendency within society nowadays for people to turn round and say, well. You have to have this balance and you have to have that, but I think, you know, we would all agree that it's, it's fair to say that, you know, wellness and well-being is different to everybody, but for those who thoroughly enjoy what they do work wise and and completely immerse themselves in that lifestyle, are there steps that they can take, While still spending so much time at work in order to sort of galvanise themselves and to protect themselves from these potential risks of things like burnout. So I, I think a lot of like people that are working long hours and enjoying it great, but I think a lot of it is, is like physical is is giving that mind, your mind a rest and, and treating it like a muscle.

So there's a lot of crossover to what we do and where we think as all three, people really, . So what what would that would be, would be taking time out, not just breaks, but giving your mind a rest, you know, we go on social media straight away they're on the phone, you see people going through racing through stuff, which is not giving that mind a rest and it's racing. So giving people time to, they're giving yourself time to breathe or meditate for even like 1510, 15 minutes a day in on your breaks to give your mind a rest, gives you that energy.

And, and you feel energised and, and you can clear think and move forward, but we're just filling that bucket up constantly throughout the day, every day, where it's just gonna overspill. So we need to release that somehow. And Anna's got some great techniques to do that.

And what, what sort of things can you look at for that sort of thing, Anna? I'd be like one of the techniques that would be encouraging would be, there's some like calm breathing. There's things like, techniques, there's techniques like the detached mindfulness that which we encourage about it's basically being in the present moment.

As well, and kind of using your five senses to be fully immersed in the moment. So, say, rather than in your lunch break, you just go on your mobile, it would be kind of take time, like go for a walk. Like nature really helps people like go out, kind of feel the breeze, listen to the birds, you know, like get really, you know, be in the moment and, and then, and, and research shows that kind of taking breaks and having to have it actually helps productivity.

So it, you know, there's something called Yokkes Dodson Law, which we kind of, we look at and you, you'd find images of it on Google. And it shows that, perform, like effort and stress, and performance, there's this, relationship where maximum effort doesn't lead to the best performance. There's a point where it's too much effort leads to stress and anxiety and so kind of take.

Breaks and taking time out really does help performance so it, it works, it works really well. And I think, you know, it is sometimes that sort of, there's almost too many things going on in life almost, isn't there where you can sort of find yourself or, you know, as soon as you finish one thing, that's great, that's finished, but you're on to the next thing straight away. Yeah.

And it often goes back to these rules that people live by, like, I must be productive, I must achieve. I must. Successful and often when they reflect on what they have in their life, you know, they aren't really, I suppose, being true to themselves or living the life as they'd want to live.

So often it's about reflecting on, on those rules and the impacts of living in that way has on them as well. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you say that we had a friend of mine from school passed away just before Christmas and he He was, he was a captain in BA by the time he was 36, and that was absolutely his lifetime's dream, you know, he, he, he'd he'd lived, slept and breathed being a pilot since he was, you know, sort of 1112 years old. And I remember sort of when we were chatting about things afterwards at the wake, and one of the lads said, you know, how many of us can truly turn round and say, you know, we're living the dream and doing the job that we, we wanted to do, and that job is what we thought.

It was, and I think, you know, giving yourself those moments to actually stop and take stock of what you are doing with who you are, is invaluable. And I think certainly sort of, you know, as we look at sort of winding things down a little bit, Stephen, what is it that you, you want to achieve with its mental? We want to give people like a well-being vision to move forward, which that's been lost and and getting people like.

Managing it on a, on a, on a daily basis and be able to control these thoughts and emotions and, and, and elevate mood really. And, and really from like some of the courses that we do. You know, people can move away and manage it themselves, and, and this has some sustainability and of doing that going forward.

So it's, it's not just peaks and troughs, all the time throughout their life. And we've had some great successes already for that. That would be that the ultimate for us is, is.

Getting people to to be able to just manage it. OK, and, and sort of, you know, those, those who've gotten interested in sort of taking the next step and, and finding out a bit more about what they can do, how can they go about getting in touch with yourselves? The the quickest one is going on the website www.it'smental.co.uk.

We are gonna launch a new website in April which will have a lot of online courses on there, so it's either physical, you can join our social community. We have currently, a couple of 1000 in the community already, which is gonna an application which will people can engage with other people in closed groups, etc. But mainly facilitate people to go back out, and be active again and connect with people.

And I think technology has a big part to, to, to play in that, as in blaming where we are as a cocoonian society, and I lost that, . Kind of motivation and proactive to get out there and and interact with, with, with the outside world. And I think these are the effects that we need to, to, to change by and people are coming into this community on a regular basis.

This last weekend we took 20 odd people that started with us, 3 months ago on the course, and we have like a graduation challenge, and they, all different ages, sizes, etc. And they, canoed the length of Lake Windermere, which is about 118 kilometres. And they all did it, so things like that, making achievements, that seems quite a big achievement, but we did that in small steps through coming on our programmes, achieving goals, and keep moving people forward.

Fabulous. OK. Well, I think, you know, from my side of things, it's obviously it's always exciting and encouragement when we've got projects that are coming along that that.

Acting to help people, I think, frankly, you know, if you, when you bow out of this life, if you can turn around and say you've helped someone, even if that's just one person, then I think, you know, you can go out with your head held high. So thank you all very much for everything that you're doing. I know that obviously we'll be continuing to signpost people towards yourselves moving forwards.

So yeah, so thanks very much for your time, and I look forward to chatting again in future. Thanks for joining us for today's episode of Vet Chat. If you've enjoyed listening to my dulcet scouse tones as I interview people much more intelligent than myself, then please do click follow and join us for future episodes.