Persons with mental illness are about twice as likely to smoke as other persons but have substantial quit rates. JAMA. 2000;284:2606-2610.

Many inmates with a serious chronic physical illness fail to receive care while incarcerated. Among inmates with mental illness, most were off their treatments at the time of arrest. Improvements are needed both in correctional health care and in community mental health services that might prevent crime and incarceration.

BackgroundConcerns about ethical conflicts, moral distress, and burnout in veterinary practice are steadily increasing. Root causes of these problems have not been rigorously identified. Little research has been done to evaluate the existence of moral distress in North American veterinarians or to explore its impact on career sustainability and poor well‐being.Hypothesis/ObjectivesEthical conflict and resultant moral distress are common occurrences in contemporary veterinary practice and negatively impact daily practice life, but may not be identified or labeled by veterinarians as such.AnimalsNo animals were used in this study.MethodsMixed methods sequential explanatory design; confidential and anonymous on‐line sampling of 889 veterinarians in North America.ResultsA majority of respondents reported feeling conflict over what care is appropriate to provide. Over 70% of respondents felt that the obstacles they faced that prevented them from providing appropriate care caused them or their staff moderate to severe distress. Seventy‐nine percent of participants report being asked to provide care that they consider futile. More than 70% of participants reported no training in conflict resolution or self‐care.Conclusions and Clinical ImportanceVeterinarians report widespread ethical conflict and moral distress across many practice types and demographics. Most veterinarians have little to no training on how to decrease the impact of these problems. Ethical conflict and resulting moral distress may be an important source of stress and poor well‐being that is not widely recognized or well defined. Well‐researched and effective tools used to decrease moral distress in human healthcare could be adapted to ameliorate this problem.

The development of mental health services for this vulnerable group with complex psychiatric and behaviour disorders has been poor for a number of reasons, including lack of recognition at the primary care level and insufficient numbers of trained professionals within specialist services.