This article was originally printed in the July/August 2026 issue of the California Veterinarian magazine.

I recently lost a friend and colleague to suicide. They were neurodivergent, and their loss has stayed with me in a way that keeps widening the questions I carry about mental health in the veterinary profession. It has also sharpened my awareness of how often suffering can sit beside competence, dedication, and deep care for others without being fully seen. In a profession filled with people who give so much of themselves, I keep coming back to the quiet burden of feeling that you have to hold it all together in order to keep belonging.

The veterinary profession has become more willing to name burnout, stress, compassion fatigue, and emotional exhaustion. However, there is still a vital part of this conversation that deserves far more attention, especially for neurodivergent professionals and the leaders who shape workplace culture.

Many neurodivergent people, including those with ADHD, autism, and dyslexia, learn to manage how they are perceived with extraordinary precision so they can be read as capable, professional, and steady. This practice is called masking, which is the effort to hide, suppress, or reshape natural ways of thinking, communicating, or responding in order to conform to social norms and appear more socially acceptable in the workplace.

When authenticity feels unsafe, adaptation can become a daily requirement. Leadership matters here because teams are always learning what gets rewarded, what gets overlooked, and what it takes to be seen as someone who fits.

To set the stage for leadership, it is first important to know what to identify. In everyday practice, masking can look like rehearsing conversations before walking into an exam room, forcing eye contact during difficult discussions, monitoring facial expressions in meetings, hiding sensory overload in a noisy treatment area, or staying late to make up for the energy it took to remain composed all day.

It can sound like saying, “I’m fine,” while the mind is flooded, the body is tense, and attention is fraying. It can feel like performing calm, warmth, flexibility, and confidence on command. Over time, that effort becomes its own workload, one that rarely appears on a schedule and often goes unnamed even by the person carrying it.

The behaviors associated with masking are easy to reward. The team member who remains agreeable, absorbs tension, pushes through fatigue, and keeps performing at a high level is often seen as exceptionally dependable. Leadership may interpret that pattern as resilience or professionalism and build more trust, responsibility, and praise around it.

Over time, the workplace can reinforce the very adaptations that carry such a heavy internal cost. That matters because people can become known for functioning well in public while their private capacity grows smaller and smaller.

This is where leadership can mistake visible competence for lasting capacity. Someone may be meeting expectations, producing strong work, supporting others, and holding a calm exterior while burning through an unsustainable amount of mental and emotional energy.

The work is getting done, the shift is being covered, and the needs of the team are being met, which makes it easy to assume the system is working. Beneath that surface, however, a neurodivergent person may be relying on hypervigilance, recovery time they do not fully get, and a level of internal strain that keeps building. Competence can be real but still come at a cost that the workplace was never meant to demand.