£20k grants for mental health projects
RCVS Mind Matters Initiative awards money to two separate projects looking at racial discrimination and moral injury in the veterinary professions.
Image © Counselling / Pixabay
The RCVS Mind Matters Initiative has awarded two £20,000 grants to separate mental health research projects for the veterinary professions.
The grants are from the Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Grant, founded in memory of council member Sarah Brown who died in 2017, to fund mental health and well-being research in the professions.
The inaugural grant in 2019 went to Scotland’s Rural College to identify ways to better promote job satisfaction, and break the cycle of negative thoughts and poor mental well-being in farm vets.
Projects
This year, the Mind Matters board awarded two £20,000 grants to:
- A joint RVC and British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society (BVEDS) research project titled “Experiences of racism and its impacts on mental well-being in black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people working and studying in the UK veterinary profession”. The project will be led by RVC research impact officer Victoria Crossley and BVEDS co-founder Navaratnam Partheeban and, additional to gathering information about racism experiences and their impact, the project will determine what individuals from the BAME veterinary community think could – and should – be done to tackle racism in the veterinary professions. It will also gather the evidence to help design appropriate interventions for those whose mental health and well-being is impacted by racism and discrimination.
- A King’s College London research project led by Neil Greenberg, Dominic Murphy and Victoria Williamson, which will be looking at the experiences of moral injury in veterinarians and the impact this has on mental health problems. The research is on types of moral injuries veterinary professionals may encounter, their prevalence, the perceptions among professionals around how these moral injuries come about and what support is needed when they occur. It is hoped the research will ultimately help the development of tailored psychological treatments for veterinary professionals who experience moral injury.
