A mental health awareness night targeting farmers is due to take place at 8:30p.m on Thursday, November 21, in Myshall Community Hall, Co. Carlow.
The night will consist of workshop discussions aimed at addressing the mental health crisis within the agricultural community, alongside the prevailing stigma associated with it.
A wide range of professionals with experience in the area will be in attendance to speak at the event, including a local GP, a Samaritans spokesperson, farmer and founder of advocacy group, Awareness Head to Toe, Graham George, and organiser, Reverend Dr. Lester Scott.
The reverend was motivated to host the workshop in collaboration with the other parties, after encountering a number of local farmers with poor mental health, who, through a combination of pride and societal stigma, have found it challenging to speak out about their ordeals.
Mental health
“On my rounds, I find that there is an awful lot of anxiety out there in the farming community. It’s a very isolated occupation, farmers are out working very long hours, they’re under a lot of pressure these days and they’re struggling.
“It’s there in the general population too, of course, but most of my parishioners would be farmers, and there’s a private angst and turmoil that’s going on within farmers especially that’s not really being addressed or talked about in society,” the reverend said.
The reverend recounts one such incidence whereby he received a call from a local farmer, who due to pressures relating to the prospect of a tractor repossession, was on the verge of committing suicide.
He had phoned the minister to ask him to explain his reasoning to his family, but thankfully, the minister managed to convince him not to take his life, and the farmer has since made a good recovery.
This experience galvanised Reverend Lester into taking action to combat the mental health “endemic” within the agri-community, which he believes is being stoked by taboos which inhibit farmers from discussing their private anxieties.
Farming has been beset by a growing number of challenges in recent year, including extreme weather events, market price volatility and higher costs of production, which have compounded stress levels within the sector, contributing to the large swathes exiting the industry annually.
“A lot of families have told me that their children are not prepared to continue the family tradition of farming because it’s just too stressful and worrisome.
“The economic climate is really just making it impossible now for small farming enterprises, which make up the backbone of the agricultural sector, to survive,” he added.
The farmer’s son recalled a time where farmers met and socialised with each other on the daily trip to the creamery, pooled machinery resources and depended on the the help of others during big tasks.
The reverend believes this strong sense of community, which once characterised farming, has now largely been lost, with the industry becoming more competitive and isolated as a result.
The minister hopes to challenge this regression in the workshop, which he hopes to run on a regular basis to foster community and provide farmers with the tools required to open up about their mental health and the confidence to ask for help when needs be.
He aspires to destigmatise the subject of mental health in general amongst the farming community, envisioning a time where farmers can talk about their emotions as freely, and as uninhibited, as they would discuss aspects of their their physical health.
“We want to get people talking, to raise the subject to a level where it won’t be so much a taboo anymore to tell people that you’re not feeling well in your emotions,” the reverend added.
He will park his office as a clergyman on the night, which will not be run under the auspices of the church, choosing instead to show up simply as a concerned citizen, in the hopes of attracting as many people as possible to the community hall.
He hopes that his message and workshop will elicit a chain reaction in other counties, encouraging fellow mental health advocates to get on board to kickstart a national movement to subvert the mental health crisis currently enveloping farmers.
The mental health advocate is a huge proponent of the simple act of opening up about vulnerabilities, which he believes, can have a profound effect on suffering individuals.
“As impossible as a problem might seem to oneself, when you talk to someone, it’s amazing how your perspective can change. I know it sounds trite, but there’s an awful lot of truth to the expression ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’,” he said.