Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. And I'm super pleased and super honoured to have Carolina Avilesz Fernandez on the line today coming from Temuco in very southern Chile, so we're getting international even with the podcast as well. Carolina is not a vet, but we will not hold that against her because she's doing something just as important.
She's a forensic psychologist and she's been working in Chile as a mental health advocate, particularly in er the veterinary profession. And we're gonna be talking about some of the issues and some of the initiatives in Chile. But first, Carolina, thank you so much for taking time today to, to speak to us.
Thank you so much, Anthony, for inviting me. It's, it's a real, a real honour for me to be part of this and be talking about the situation we are experiencing in Chile with the mental health in the veterinary community. Yeah, I, before we go into that, tell, tell us a little bit about your career, you obviously founded Adinnias, if you can explain that, what that is, but also .
Actually qualified as a forensic psychologist, so how does that differ from an ordinary psychologist, if you can just let us know what that exactly is. Well, I started my career as a community psychologist. I all my first jobs were related to create a better community environment, especially a focus on kids development, but at some point I started realising how, like the justice system affects communities, especially communities that are, do not have a lot of access to education, do not have a lot of access to like different, like all the services that the government provides and.
One of the things that worries me in the very beginning was to see how violent were certain environments where I was working. And that's when I decided that I needed to understand more how the the justice system works and how it affects mentally people that is around that and that's how I started working with victims of different kind of crimes and I ended up working 5 years. I don't know how to say this in English, but it's like the, the area of the government that works with jails.
So I used to work in social reintegration with people that were convicted for different kind of crimes. And from there I started understanding and having an interest in and see how violence and abuse actually affects not just the people but the family and the community and that's what I've been doing for around 10 to 12 years. Yeah, it's fascinating, obviously, psychologists can do so much good work in prisons because.
When you see people are violent, there's usually something that's happened to them previous in their life that's made them into that person and. And it's so important, I believe that prison should be a place of rejuvenation rather than just punishment. Obviously there's an element of punishment, but we must be wanting to create prisons where we can bring people back into society.
Exactly. For me, that was one of the things I really like about this career path to be able to actually see hope in the most complicated places with people that were victims, but at the same time with those creating the victims. And especially seeing how abuse and violence actually affects society in general, that's been one of the main goals in general.
And in a way, even though I is not related to the veterinary community, at least not directly, is one of the things I wanna start working with veterinarians because violence and abuse is not just happening in the human level it's also happening in the human and animal bond level. So one of the many things we're trying to approach, understand and also provide some kind of support had to do with that. I don't know how things in that kind of matter are in the UK, but at least here we just recently have a law called we call it the cholito law and there is a law that was created to protect animals from violence and abuse, especially focused on companion animals, and it has been one of the many reasons why we were like, hey, we need to do something as psychologists and how we can provide some kind of support.
So the people that actually facing and recognising and identifying this kind of abuse, not just a human level. It was really interesting, Carolina, last week I was at the World Small Animal Veterinary Association congress in Portugal in Lisbon. And we've also worked with the Lynx organisation in the UK, but Paula Boyden, who is one of the vets working, er, I think for Dog Trust, but also the Lynx organisation was giving a talk all about non accidental injury.
So the cat that comes in, especially young cat with a broken leg. It's probably . Not done that by falling, you know, there, there could be the possibility of somebody in the house having damaged the leg purposefully.
And it was really interesting, as Paula was talking, she was saying that often animals are used as a tool to keep somebody in a relationship, in that, you know, the abuser says to the abused partner, if you leave me, I will kill the dog or the cat. So it's interesting that we're talking about this now because obviously it's something that was getting mentioned at er. WSAVA and.
Listening to that presentation, it really makes you as a vet a bit sick in the stomach that obviously animals are suffering non accidental injuries, but also feeling compassion for the people who are in these abusive relationships and of course, Somebody who will damage, injure, kill a dog or a cat, it's not a million miles before they will do serious damage to a child or, you know, a partner, so it's . It's an important issue that vets understand it because if we don't realise it happens, we never consider it as a diagnosis when somebody brings in a cat with two broken legs. Cats on the whole do not break legs except in road traffic accidents.
So if a cat has been injured in such a way, it's most likely. That somebody has done it to the cat. Exactly, and I would say it's even more complicated than that because well I've seen what in the states have been doing with the like the link coalition with it which I think is really amazing and I really hope we can have that kind of conversation here in Latin America in general because we don't have that here.
Here is still, I mean, I know it's still something quite new in many places, but here's something we definitely don't talk about. Like the link among, violence towards humans and violence towards animals, and it's, it's very interesting because for example to me as a forensic psychologist working, one of the many things that I had to do when I was working for, we call it gendarmeria. I'm gonna just use that word gendarmeria is the area related to the jails in here in Chile.
So when I was working there, one of the many instruments that we used to evaluate if a person was a potentially dangerous person and was not able to actually like do for example public service as a way to like give back to society and be reconnected with certain services. One of the, the instruments that we used to use actually considers, animal abuse of one of the major indicators if the person, how dangerous the person might be, for all the per for other other humans or the kids, etc. So even though this is something that is being used by the government's mandatory every time I had to do some kind of evaluation is like.
Beyond that, people don't really care in a way, even though, as a psychologist for me it was one of the things that I knew that it could be even more dangerous like this person have shown cruelty towards animals, cats, dogs, whatever. And here I'm not just talking about physical violence. Here at least in Chile, we do have a lot of cases of sexual abuse towards cats and dogs.
So if you think if a cat is suffering from this, what is happening with the people around? The perpetrator of this kind of crimes. And that's something that people don't really see it like oh this is happening to a cat, this is happening to a dog, this is happening to a sheep.
There's a lot of different animals that are suffering from sexual abuse and we're not questioning what this means beyond an animal. Of course, the animal is something we need to take care of, but that's just one indicator that probably some other things are happening. And one of the things, for example, that I strongly believe that if we are able to provide not just mental health support to veterinarians, but also a network, with other professionals that knows and understand how violence works in the world.
We can maybe identify cases of. Huge abuse towards a number of. Animals or people, maybe we can stop it even before it it keeps growing and it keeps affecting.
Other people or all the animals, but sadly, and I don't know if this also is happening in the UK here if someone identify a case like that usually they don't do not have a support network where they can. Have some help, have support or even just talk about the things they're actually facing related to the animal health. I, I know after the talk, and obviously I've heard Paula speak before, but it does leave you feeling slightly sick in your stomach, some of the things that have happened, and so I can understand how that can affect mental health, and we know mental health, obviously in the UK with that, it's a stressed profession, .
There's a lot of good things about the profession, but there's certainly something that is not quite right there. And so it's interesting to hear that. There are similar changes happening in .
In, in Chile as well, so perhaps tell us a little bit about the situation in Chile with regards to mental health amongst amongst the profession. Well, if we talk about mental health in Chile in general, the situation is not the best actually sadly we're the country in Latin America that have the higher rates of depression and even suicide among the good news that we have been having lately is actually our current government, is, investing a lot in different programmes, related to mental health, especially related to youth. But we're trying to see how we can actually bring that kind of initiatives to all the areas like for example, the veterinary community.
There are, I know some people that have been trying to bring attention to this kind of problems within the vet community for the past few years, but sadly haven't had the impact, so we can actually prevent suicide and With all the knowledge that we have from mental health professionals, so now we're actually trying to create that, and it's one of the reasons actually why we decided to create corporatinite, because at some point the dream about creating this nonprofit that no more than 1 year ago, maybe 1 year and a half ago. And we start realising all the challenges that we see in the vet community, how it's actually rapidly changing, what I've seen in all the research and information from all over the world, like all the changes that in the United States, for example, they started to see in the vet community 30 years ago we started to see it this last 10 years, so you have been a really. Fast change for us really quickly, a lot of things are shifting.
And because of that, we were like, OK, we need to do something about it. We need to start bringing all the knowledge that we have from all the areas like psychology, social work, and see how we can provide support to veterinarians. So now we're trying to do that.
We are still not in a position that we could say, oh, we have all these initiatives working because we're still creating it. At Finitas was created. We were recognised legally in February this year.
So we're just now creating connections and finding alliances so we can actually talk about this and provide support. So a lot of things are like in the making. We have a couple of companies that have shown interest and see how they can help us.
To bring to life all the initiatives we're dreaming of, but it's still something we're working on it we're bringing more people we're trying to go deep into all the challenges that veterinarians are experiencing and using also this platform where the government is already talking about this, trying to bring hope and say, OK, there's a lot of things it's painful, but there are things that are happening and we want to see how we can help for this to happen. And also reach the vet community because I feel at least here veterinarians usually just work with all the veterinarians, so usually the conversations don't really go outside the profession. So we want to do that.
We want to bring this oxygen of all the professionals talking about this and bringing their knowledge. I think it's really interesting, Carolina, because I know that you did some work in change management and I know you've not worked with vets in that area. But if change has happened over 20 or 30 years in the UK but it's happening in 10 in Chile, that's very fast and whether you're a vet or whatever your job is, many people do struggle with change, don't they?
So that can create anxiety because. You know, if one starts a new job, the first week or so you have butterflies in your tummy because you are nervous about meeting new colleagues, thinking, can you do the job, trying to learn the new systems. In fact, we've got somebody just started in the business on Monday, so it's important to have that supportive, .
Background and supportive boss that will help you with that but nevertheless. It's always going to be a stressful time, so if change is happening so quick, it's not to be surprising that that er that stress levels go up. Yes, exactly.
And I was saying a lot of the things also is change that do not have to do with It's not something that you choose, it's something that is happening in society. Which is even more complicated to adapt because it's I don't know for example I've seen in a lot of the research done in English speaking countries where for example the relationship among between a human and the animals have been changing for decades. That incorporation, for example, of animals inside the houses in Chile, and I would say most countries that speak Spanish is something quite new, quite recent, and it was Even more violent with the pandemic.
And because of that, actually we're talking right now because of all the changes that happened that were increased during the pandemic. Because a lot of the people start adopting cats, adopting dogs, bringing them inside the house, or even if they had it already inside the house, they had time to actually pay attention to their pets, and that started like impacting directly to a lot of the veterinarians here and A year ago, I think it was May last year, the vet association from the the city where I live, they started this campaign called I'm going to loosely translated to with violence. There's no treatment conviencito.
Which was a campaign aiming to. Show the people or that the violence towards veterinarians grew potentially during the pandemic they start feeling a lot of they start experiencing a lot of violence in their clinics, they start experiencing also a lot of violence online. And that's why they started creating this campaign.
They started doing things in some of the parts here and actually the way that I got to know about this campaign was because one of the events that they actually held was just a few blocks from where I live. And I was walking there and suddenly I saw the vets of my cats. I have two cats that might make some noise at some point.
And I saw her like delivering these flyers with information, and I saw these hens with like a stop sign and we start talking about it. And I remember a few weeks after that, I had to neuter one of the cats are just rescue. And then I had the possibility to talk with Sophia.
And ask her like what's going on like why were you doing this campaign so she starts telling me all the terrible situations they have been experiencing during the pandemic and how this has been like rapidly changing and the people not really understanding animal health but still bringing them inside and then feeling really confused when talking to their vets or recognising symptoms which created a really complicated situation for the most veterinarians, especially the ones that work with small animals. And I remember actually one of the moments for me that was key to say I cannot go back home and ignore the mental health situation was actually that conversation with Sophia, because besides been talking about all the violence that they've been experiencing during the pandemic. I remember I, I told her, oh no, so you have, I've seen a research, not in Chile, but in other countries where the suicide rate is really high.
And I remember his face completely changing, and she said to me, I know 7 veterinarians that actually die by suicide. And that was the moment I was like I cannot go home and stop thinking about this because as a psychologist, I don't know any of my colleagues that died by suicide. I have a lot that I have been diagnosed with depression.
I myself was diagnosed with PTSD a couple of years ago. But even though there was a moment in my life, for example, that one of the many symptoms that I had when I had the diagnosis was actually suicidal thoughts, as I knew this is a symptom of all the other things that I've been experiencing, I requested support quite quickly as soon as I was able to realise I cannot face this on my own. So after that conversation, and when she gave me this huge number, it was a moment where we said, OK, let's start talking.
Let's see what we can do. I've worked in suicide related programmes, so maybe we can find a way to transfer that knowledge. To what is happening among the community.
So that's one of the things I actually created at Finnias that created this conversations where we have to acknowledge what is happening, that all this rapid change and see how we can face it together and not just allowing or leaving veterinarians do this by by themselves, but also joining this efforts because, because at the end of the day for me as a pet owner, because I started as a pet owner with this. I need My veterinarian team to be healthy and supported. So they can provide better care for my pets and my pets are part also of my happiness and my mental health.
And if I'm able to actually provide this support, I believe not just supporting them, I'm supporting myself in a way. I don't know if it makes sense. No, it, it absolutely does make sense.
One of our visions is to have the world's most confident vets, and that is, if you feel confident walking into the consulting room to make a diagnosis, then you're gonna be more settled in the career. But I think there is a worrying trend also in the UK of clients becoming more demanding. Obviously there is a shortage of vets in the UK.
Many people as in Chile, bought pets during the pandemic. And so less vets, more pets, trying to look after everybody becomes really difficult. And so mental health support is important, but I, I think also we need to look at how do we make life easier for the vets?
Can we use digital tools? Can we think about telemedicine for those vets who are at home who don't work in practise anymore. Maybe on paternity or maternity leave, but could nevertheless do some you know, work around triage, so that the numbers of people coming into the practise is perhaps lessened so you can spend more time with them.
And feel that you've gone home doing a good job because I think again one of the characteristics of many of the vets in the UK would be a perfectionism. And so they want to do the job really well, and I think if they don't do the job well, that can also really impact on on mental health as well. So obviously a lot of work to be done.
We actually, about 8 years ago, our Royal College started a Mind Matters initiative, which was all around mental health, realising that vets were struggling with stress, etc. And we actually, practically said to them, well, we would like to do something and we set up a mindfulness course, which was watched by thousands and thousands of vets, nurses, receptionists, practise managers, people in the pharmaceutical industry. And actually if I'm stopped at conferences, it's often to say we love your clinical training, but actually the training on mindfulness has changed my life.
Similarly, I'm not shouting at my nurses when I'm in the consulting, you know, in the clinic, or I'm going on holiday and I'm not worried about the practise and thinking about the practise all the time, so. There's no doubt that if we can get training like mindfulness in. As a preventive, hopefully we can prevent people going into these terrible stress and anxiety and you know, worse still, by, by treating it at the very, very early stages.
Yeah, well, mindfulness and all the techniques and initiatives aiming to provide like how do you say like a self, I, I don't know to say that in English, like self-care. Yeah, that's the word, self care. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, all the activities, initiatives, or strategies aiming to provide tools for self-care are really useful and of course, they should be. Hopefully everybody should have some kind of training, but at the same time, I would say, including as well as strategies to take care.
Of a team. I think that's also something we need to talk about because there will be times that for example, I might be really trained in mindfulness, I would be great at doing it, but at some point, I, it might not be enough. And that's also one of the many things we want to start talking about is how we can take a mental health and psychology, for example, outside of like the individual.
Conversational boss and also bring it to how can we talk as teams and how we can protect each other as a team and bringing for example psychological safety strategies for teams in moments where it could be extremely stressful and where all the the strategies that I have for myself is not gonna be enough. And why am I saying this? Because also like I said before, I had a diagnosis of PTSD and I used to believe before that diagnosis that I was really good at controlling my emotions.
I've been doing as a psychologist, of course, we need to do a lot of therapy to actually get to know ourselves better and be able. To work with other people knowing as well, what kind of things can be problematic for me. But I do remember there were, well, the, the reason I had a diagnosis of PTSD, it was not just one situation where a lot of different situations that happened to me at pretty much at the same time.
So at some point, I just couldn't handle all of them on my own. And I do think now that I've been after that I've been studying a lot about psychological safety. I do believe that if I had some kind of support and knowledge of the people around me, my team, my family members, etc.
And they could have helped me to create a safer space when my skills were not being enough because I was feeling overwhelmed by different situations that were happening at the same time in my life. I think that's also something we need to acknowledge, especially in Areas of work and with this not only I'm talking about veterinarians areas of work where we have to deal with pain is something we need to start incorporating. I would say like usually here in Spanish I would say.
Professional like the profession who take care of others and could be a psychologist, a therapist, psychiatrist, a human medicine, animal care, all that kind of professions or activities that Require taking care of someone else that might be potentially in pain. We need to have a strategies that go beyond just what I can do as a person. I can do as a professional, but also what we can do as a team.
And that's something I really believe we need to start working and one of the initiatives we actually have is this like team support programme where we want to start incorporating slowly, of course, because change management as we were talking, we cannot just change everything right away we need to do it step by step. That's why we're creating a long term programme. So we can start incorporating easy tools, easy activities that people and teams can start doing once a week, for example, that can create a safe space where we can Show vulnerability where we can say I, I'm scared because I might have done something wrong and I don't know how to prove it, or I feel insecure of my knowledge or I feel I felt affected emotionally but by one of the cases I've been working with and I think that's also a conversation we need to start having how can we as teams provide support to someone that might have a lot of.
Skills, but maybe there could be a moment where those skills are not going to be enough. That's really important, Carolina, because . No man is an island, if we try and do everything on our own, it can be really difficult.
The importance of good relationships at home and work, I think will make that. Much more likely to happen and . Hopefully create more stable psychological teams as well that we can, we have more.
Resilience as well, because we know that people have our back. Exactly. Actually, one of the the experience I've been having with veterinary teams that have experience.
Critical situations, let's say at the beginning of the year, even before Ainitas existed legally as an organ as a nonprofit organisation, we had, I had the sad information that one of the vets. Here in our community die by suicide. And back then I was already having conversations with the Veterinary Association of our community, and I remember when that happened they called me like, what can we do?
He had a team of 12 people working with him. This happened actually in at his clinic, so it was a very complicated, very stressful at sad moment for everyone involved. And one of the things that actually happened is we start talking and say, OK, how can we provide some kind of support to this team because of course they they they're headless right now.
And I did a 2 month support with the entire team and then one extra month with all the . Clinical director, I think is is the name. So we can find some kind of support and provide spaces where they can actually start trusting each other and start evolving with their emotions and transiting for this pain in a healthier way.
And I do remember the first sessions with them, it was. One of the most painful experience in my career I would say and I've experienced my share of really complicated situations as you can imagine working with people that were victim of different kind of crimes or people that were in this like social reintegration pro programme. But ah the pain caused to a community after a suicide is something really complicated to manage.
So I do remember the first sessions were extremely painful, the the the sadness with the team, it was one of the most Painful things I've seen, but with the time when we start creating this. Activities and spaces that were safe to talk is completely start changing. And they went from like cry to ours in the sessions that we were holding to a moment when they start seeing hope and they start transiting from pain to hope and actually be able to to see that and be part of this healing process.
I would say even though it was painful for me. It was one of all the many other reasons that I was like, OK, I want to actually spend time of my life, hopefully preventing this, but if this happens, I know it's a pain that can be, I don't think it's going away, it's never going to happen, but we can work with this pain. We can have moments together where we can actually share the pain and sharing the pain is going to make it easier.
To see hope, to find hope with each other and actually was really beautiful to see because one of the many activities, for example, that we would do at the end of every session was to do like a short, emotional. Monitor the emotional, like emotional, I don't know how to say monitor like monitoring emotions kind of. So we will, I will ask just short questions and they need to give me a fast answer.
We do not talk about the answer. We do not discuss it, we do not evaluate it, you just say it. And I remember the beginning of the sessions, it was really sad related words.
Like I feel hopeless, I feel headless, I feel lost. But I remember the last words that we had after these 2 months working with them. A lot of words were related to hope, to feel comforted, to feel that I have a supporting network, to feel that my pain is not just my pain, it's a shared pain, so it makes it easier to work with it and to go home and just sleep with this pain because it's not just me, the one experiencing.
And the beautiful thing was that this activity that we start doing in this situation, they start, they kept it. So Actually, I talked to them like 2 weeks ago and they still do it once a week. They gather, they ask each other how they are, they share the the pain or the good things and at the end of the last question was, OK, is there anything you can be thankful?
And I remember when I told them like, I know, for example, in the first few days, you're not going to find anything you're going to be thankful for. But just find something. It could be that the tea was in the right temperature.
It could be that it was a sunny day, even though my entire day was horrible, but the sunny day made me feel a little bit better when I was outside. And even if it's just that the only thing you could say I'm thankful for it, just do it. And the beautiful thing was we started like that.
OK, like today, the coffee was good enough. So I'm thankful. But then it was like, I'm thankful that today I was feeling really low.
I was really feeling really down. And one of my colleagues saw me and they asked me how I am. And even though I didn't want to talk in that moment, I just say I'm fine, it made me feel really good.
So thank you. So they start having this moments once a week where they would recognise themselves, what they were doing that was helping them to survive this experience, but at the same time recognising things that maybe before they never thought that it was something that was, I don't know, like, It was good enough to have in your life to say, OK, I can keep going even if everything is wrong today. So that kind of things, for example, kind of changed the way people start talking to each other.
Carolina, thank you, that's amazing, thank you for being that agent of hope, and I think gratitude is. So important because even in the worst of days, there is always something that the song of a bird outside, as you say, a nice cup of coffee. And I think that can really change everybody's mindset, can't it, so I, I'm so pleased that.
As a business itself that I think exists to bring hope in all different forms, it's great to hear you doing such fantastic work. A far way away from the UK but really, really important work because, We, we have to make this, these occurrences less and less frequent. Yeah, one of the messages I've been trying to to.
Give to people as well, one is, of course, when there's some kind of help and support, there will be hope. But at the same time that there's a lot of problems that are a worldwide problem. I was talking to Mark from Bets in Mine a few weeks ago and actually I have to thank you to be able to know him because I saw the interview you held with him, and that actually encouraged me to write him and get to know a bit more about vets in Mind.
And I remember we were talking about a lot of this experiences of mental health problems and emotional problems emotional challenge and the vet community and I remember one of the things we we talk at the end of our meeting was this is a problem everywhere this is a worldwide problem this is. This is not just in the UK it's not just in North America and Australia, where are the most research about this. This is something that is affecting veterinarians worldwide, .
And I hope we start my dream would be one of my main dreams that we can actually create alliances, global alliances to actually show people, show the world that this is something that is happening. It's something that not just affects veterinarians, affects the entire community. But at the same time that there are ways that we can face it, that we can strengthen the community, the vet community, but at the same time, all the communities that moves around veterinarians, because like I told you, I started part of my job because I am a cat owner.
And because I love my cats, I want to have a veterinary support that could be providing me support but providing my cat support and for that I also want to be part of it. I want to see how we can share the knowledge and experience that we have working in mental health in all areas and see how we can create networks of support to everyone that actually exists in places where humans and animals bond and grow together. So that's part of the things that I want to talk to all the people, connect with other institutions and NGOs and nonprofit organisations all over the world.
Fantastic, Carolina, and I, this recording will obviously go out later, but today is World Animal Day. It's also the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is also obviously the patron saint of animals and the environment. And there is that link of animals and the environment if we're in a beautiful place.
If we're stroking our favourite pet, then that can also help with our, with our mental health, so all of these things are circular and holistic, aren't they? Exactly, absolutely, . I mean, one of the things I've learned talking with veterinarians, for example, was the One Health initiative and one Health understanding of how human health, animal health, and environmental health are completely related, which is something that I remember it's like, of course, it's so obvious, but until someone say it, it's not that obvious.
And I feel the more I know, the more I want to provide all the experience and knowledge to this area. Because I do believe that it's, it's, it's all connected, we are connected even though I'm here in southern Chile. Almost falling from the map you in the UK, still a lot of problems are happening in both places and all the places in between.
And I do believe also pet owners and all the people moving around, animals in general should be part also of what's happening within the big community and start creating things and start like joining efforts to make all the changes that we need as a society, as societies, not even one society, as societies, as humanity. So absolutely. So thank you actually so much to consider to invite me to this.
I really wanted to see and also connect with all the people that are interested in this kind of matters. Because at the end of the day, we're all in this journey of life together, regardless if we're humans, animals. Trees and forest.
I think we, we met, you're, you're a LinkedIn buddy. So it will be great if at the end we can obviously put on the podcast some of the ways that people can connect with you because we are stronger together. So, Carolina, I've really enjoyed speaking to you today, muchas gracias.
He has to fronto. Pronto. Let's keep in touch.
And let's keep talking about mental health and human animal bonds. Yeah. Thank you so much Carolina.
Thank you everyone for listening. This was Vet Chat. This is Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vets.
Take care, bye bye.
