Project Sticker campaign puts vet med mental health in focus
Bottom line
Project Sticker, a nonprofit focused on early mental health support for veterinary professionals, has launched “Tell Us Something Good,” a Mental Health Awareness Month campaign that asks people across vet med to share moments of purpose, pride, and connection through notes, short videos, or social posts. Veterinary Practice News reported the campaign on April 28, 2026, framing it as an effort to balance the profession’s ongoing conversations about stress and burnout with stories about what helps people stay in the field. Project Sticker says the campaign is designed for any role in veterinary medicine and pairs storytelling with links to support resources, including crisis help. (veterinarypracticenews.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the campaign lands in a field where mental health strain remains a workforce issue, not just an individual one. Recent reporting and industry commentary point to persistent risks tied to heavy workloads, grief exposure, client conflict, workplace culture, and access to lethal means, while Merck Animal Health’s new Veterinary Wellbeing Collective is pushing for more coordinated, evidence-based action across the profession. A strengths-based campaign won’t solve systemic problems on its own, but it may give practices a practical way to open conversations, reinforce psychological safety, and highlight the moments that support retention. (dvm360.com)
What to watch: Watch for whether campaigns like this connect to broader, sustained workplace changes, including resource sharing, leadership training, and the joint communications work outlined by the Veterinary Wellbeing Collective. (merck-animal-health.com)
A new Mental Health Awareness Month campaign is trying to shift part of the veterinary wellbeing conversation from crisis alone to what helps people remain in practice. Project Sticker’s “Tell Us Something Good” invites veterinary professionals to share meaningful moments, whether through a handwritten note, a short video, or a social media post, with the goal of surfacing stories of purpose, pride, joy, and connection across the field. Veterinary Practice News reported the launch on April 28, 2026, and Project Sticker describes the effort as part of its broader mission to support veterinary team members before they reach a mental health crisis. (veterinarypracticenews.com)
The campaign arrives after years of intense focus on burnout, moral distress, and suicide risk in veterinary medicine. That focus has been necessary, but some leaders in the space are now arguing that the profession also needs a more complete narrative, one that acknowledges strain without making it the only story people hear about their work. In a May 1, 2026, commentary, Animal Health News and Views described “Tell Us Something Good” as part of a broader turning point in veterinary mental health messaging, emphasizing that awareness alone is not enough if the field does not also make room for what sustains people. (animalhealthnewsandviews.com)
Project Sticker’s own materials position the campaign as a simple intervention with a practical aim: get people to pause, identify a meaningful moment, and share it. The organization says “good moments protect mental health, but they rarely get shared,” and the campaign hub encourages professionals to post publicly because their stories may help others “find their own good.” The nonprofit also keeps crisis resources visible, including 988 and the Crisis Text Line, underscoring that gratitude-focused messaging is being presented as one layer of support, not a replacement for clinical care or emergency help. (stickwithus.vet)
That framing matters because the profession’s risks are well documented. dvm360 recently summarized a range of suicide risk factors in veterinary medicine, including frequent exposure to animal suffering and euthanasia, long hours, heavy workloads, client conflict, bullying, harassment, limited support from colleagues or leadership, and access to lethal means such as pentobarbital. At the same time, Merck Animal Health announced the Veterinary Wellbeing Collective on May 4, 2026, after a July 29, 2025, roundtable with 16 experts. The group says it wants to move the field from fragmented efforts to coordinated, evidence-based action, with plans that include a consensus definition of veterinary wellbeing, a centralized resource database, and a joint communications campaign. (dvm360.com)
Industry reaction around “Tell Us Something Good” has been cautiously supportive rather than celebratory. In Veterinary Practice News, Project Sticker board member Krista Martin said the initiative is meant to create space for professionals to remember why they chose the profession, adding that gratitude “does not ignore the hard.” Animal Health News and Views went further, arguing that what has been missing from many wellbeing discussions is a consistent effort to highlight what helps people stay. That perspective aligns with Project Sticker’s positioning of the campaign as a counterweight to, not a denial of, the profession’s harder realities. (veterinarypracticenews.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially practice leaders, the significance is less about a single campaign and more about what kind of workplace conversation it enables. Storytelling efforts like this can be low-cost tools for team meetings, internal recognition, onboarding, or social content, and they may help normalize discussion of wellbeing in a way that feels accessible. But the broader evidence suggests the biggest gains will come when those cultural signals are paired with structural changes, such as better onboarding, leadership training, healthier workplace norms, and easier access to mental health resources. Merck’s Collective explicitly identified those workplace and system-level gaps, which suggests the sector is increasingly treating wellbeing as an operational issue tied to retention and sustainability, not just an individual resilience challenge. (merck-animal-health.com)
There is also a communications lesson here for the profession. If veterinary mental health messaging focuses only on burnout and suicide, it can reinforce hopelessness, a concern the Veterinary Wellbeing Collective specifically flagged in its summary of past narratives. A campaign centered on meaningful moments may help rebalance that message, especially for early-career veterinarians, technicians, and support staff deciding whether they can see a future in the field. The likely value is not that positive storytelling fixes the problem, but that it can support psychological safety and retention when embedded in a larger wellbeing strategy. That last point is an inference based on the campaign’s design and the broader workforce context. (merck-animal-health.com)
What to watch: The next signal will be whether “Tell Us Something Good” remains a seasonal awareness effort or becomes part of a more coordinated industry push, especially as the Veterinary Wellbeing Collective continues its every-other-month meetings and develops shared tools and messaging for the profession. (merck-animal-health.com)