I was listening to an interview program several months ago about suicide in veterinarians and they spent quite a bit of time talking — not all of the time, or even most of the time, but more than I thought — about takeovers of vet clinics by private equity firms. Basically they were saying that older veterinarians will get an offer from a private equity firm, sell the practice to them, and then retire early, and the stress on the remaining practitioners would go up.

It seems like this pattern might not apply everywhere (or might), that the problems are broader than the US.