Minister of State for farm safety Martin Heydon will speak at a meeting in Brussels tomorrow (Thursday, January 25) on mental health issues that can be experienced by farmers.
The meeting is part of the SafeHabitus project, which is an EU-funded initiative aiming to bring together experts, policy-makers and farming organisations to identify a “plan of action” for tackling mental health challenges in farming today.
Teagasc is one of the organisations involved in the SafeHabitus project, as is CEJA, the EU’s young farmers organisation, and a number of other groups from the EU and several member states.
The organisers of the meeting said that farmers across the EU die from suicide, while many others suffer from mental illness, every day.
The initiative will address the challenges that farmers face, including the economic and environmental unpredictability of their livelihoods, risk of both spatial and occupational isolation, and, in recent years, rapidly evolving “societal and policy contexts”.
These factors can contribute to heightened stress and, in severe cases, mental health challenges.
The SafeHabitus project will aim to build on a wider EU initiative on mental health and a European Parliament report which called for targeted support for farmers and rural areas.
Participants in tomorrow’s meeting – which begins at 1:00p.m Irish time – will assess existing national practices from a number of countries, including Belgium, Finland, France and Ireland, and will share knowledge from grassroots farmer associations on how they are dealing with the issue of farmer mental health.
The seminar is being hosted by Irish MEP Maria Walsh and Finnish MEP Petri Sarvamaa.
As well as Heydon’s contribution, Henri Cabanel, a member of the senate of France (which, like Ireland’s Seanad, is the upper house of the French legislature) will address the meeting.
Cabanel was involved in a 2021 French senate report on farm suicides.
Policymakers and stakeholders from the EU farming sector will attend the meeting and discuss future opinions for EU action on the issue.
Tomorrow’s meeting is the first in a series of SafeHabitus policy seminars that will bring together policymakers, policy stakeholders, and researchers to share knowledge on how EU and national agriculture, health policies, and social policies can address mental health issues in the farming community.