Project Sticker launches veterinary mental health storytelling campaign: full analysis

A new campaign tied to Mental Health Awareness Month is trying to change the tone of the veterinary wellbeing conversation. Tell Us Something Good, launched by Project Sticker, invites veterinary professionals to share short stories, notes, videos, or social posts about moments of meaning, pride, joy, and connection in their work. The premise is straightforward: the field still needs to talk openly about burnout, distress, and suicide risk, but it also needs to make room for the experiences that help people feel grounded enough to stay. (animalhealthnewsandviews.com)

That framing reflects a broader shift in veterinary mental health efforts. For years, the public conversation has focused heavily on the profession’s strain, including burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral distress. Project Sticker positions itself as an upstream intervention, aiming to reach veterinary professionals before they hit a crisis point. According to its website, the nonprofit grew out of a 2024 Western Veterinary Conference connection among The Bridge Club, Empowering Vet Teams, and MyBalto, and it now offers a centralized mental health resource hub while also pursuing research and workplace-support tools. (stickwithus.vet)

The campaign’s public messaging leans on evidence around gratitude and positive reflection. In its launch article, Animal Health News and Views said the initiative is grounded in research suggesting gratitude practices can improve wellbeing and help sustain positive emotions over time. The piece also links the campaign to a wider mental health context, citing early evidence of reduced suicide deaths among younger Americans after the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline launch, while stressing that progress still depends on sustained investment in crisis services. (animalhealthnewsandviews.com)

Project Sticker’s own materials make clear that this is meant to sit alongside, not instead of, more traditional support. Its site emphasizes proactive access to mental health resources, lists crisis and peer-support options, and repeatedly directs people in crisis to 988 or the Crisis Text Line. The organization also says all board members are QPR gatekeepers and describes its mission as helping veterinary professionals “before they reach a mental health crisis.” (stickwithus.vet)

Industry context helps explain why campaigns like this may get traction. Merck Animal Health’s veterinary wellbeing materials report that veterinarians experience exhaustion at much higher rates than the general population, and related materials cite similar strain among veterinary technicians. Meanwhile, AAHA’s Stay, Please retention work has found that support for wellbeing, caring leadership, appreciation, and compensation all shape whether people stay in practice or consider leaving. AAHA has also separately highlighted gratitude and recognition as practical retention levers, not just feel-good ideas. (merck-animal-health-usa.com)

That’s the key professional takeaway: this campaign is less about branding than about workplace culture. If teams engage with it thoughtfully, it could give hospitals a simple structure for peer recognition, debriefing, and reconnecting staff with meaningful moments in practice. On its own, that won’t solve understaffing, workload, financial pressure, or poor leadership. But in a field where appreciation and wellbeing support are already linked to retention, a low-barrier storytelling campaign may be useful when paired with more substantive operational and mental health supports. That’s an inference based on the retention and wellbeing data, rather than a proven outcome of this campaign specifically. (aaha.org)

There’s also a messaging nuance here that may matter. Veterinary mental health advocates have increasingly argued that the profession needs to avoid reducing itself to a crisis narrative alone. Project Sticker’s campaign appears to fit that approach by trying to preserve honesty about hardship while also reinforcing belonging, purpose, and connection. For practice leaders, that balance may be the most useful part: acknowledging the hard realities without letting them become the only story teams hear about veterinary medicine. (animalhealthnewsandviews.com)

What to watch: The next question is whether Project Sticker can convert awareness into durable participation, partnerships, and measurable practice-level impact, especially as it builds out its broader research and wellness-support agenda beyond May 2026. (stickwithus.vet)