Mental Health Awareness Week 2026 – turning evidence into action

How we're supporting mental health and wellbeing 

The theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘action’ – focusing on how we can prevent people from becoming unwell in the first place to enable them to thrive.

At the RCVS, we take mental health seriously. Our Mind Matters Team works hard to improve the mental health of the veterinary community across all settings and career stages, through facilitating accessible, high-quality and evidence-based mental health projects, research, and content.

The team has done a great deal to raise awareness of the mental health challenges impacting the professions, and is now focusing increasingly on action. This includes creating and providing evidence-based training and resources, promoting help seeking behaviours for individuals, and providing employers, managers and leaders with the tools to make systemic change within their organisations.

RCVS Mind Matters Mental Health Research Symposium 

Turning research into action 

While awareness raising plays a vital role in informing and educating people about the existing mental health issues faced by veterinary professionals, it is what we do with that information that really matters and makes lasting change.

All Mind Matters resources, CPD and events are evidence-based – designed to support veterinary professionals to develop skills that have been proven to work effectively, which can then be applied to life and work. That’s why research plays such an important role in everything that we do – so we can be sure that the actions being taken will make a tangible difference.

Most recently, we’ve been taking action by introducing a new standard to our Practice Standards Scheme (PSS) – requiring all PSS-accredited practices to implement a practice-specific suicide prevention plan. 

Working with external suicide prevention experts, our Mind Matters and PSS teams have produced three resources that are aligned with the new British standard (BS30480) on suicide prevention in the workplace. These evidence-based resources are designed to ensure that putting these plans in place doesn’t just act as a tick box exercise, but instead delivers meaningful impact by supporting workplaces to drive real change and help prevent instances of suicide within the veterinary community.