A member of the Seanad has advised farmers to get behind a campaign that aims to end stigma around mental health.
Senator Victor Boyhan – who is a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine – was speaking to farmers at Fermoy Mart in Co. Cork when he called on attendees to support the Green Ribbon Campaign.
The campaign is run by See Change, a group that advocates for reducing stigma associated with mental health problems.
Its annual Green Ribbon Campaign aims to spread awareness about all mental health difficulties.
At the meeting, which was organised by the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Boyhan encouraged farmers to wear a green ribbon, which is an international symbol of mental health.
Speaking after the meeting, Boyhan said: “It is concerning that over 50% of farmers do not know how to contact a local mental health clinic and 25% do not know where to go receive mental health services, according to a study carried out by Dublin City University and Teagasc“.
“I want to encourage farmers to wearing the Green Ribbon for September to show others that they are open to starting positive conversations about mental health and that’s why I want to bring the green ribbon direct to farmers,” Boyhan added.
The comments from the senator comes after further research emerged which indicates that older farmers in Ireland appear to have a higher suicide risk, when compared to non-farmer males of the same age.
The findings are contained in a pre-print paper published by researchers from the Health Service Executive (HSE) and University College Dublin (UCD) who sought to determine whether male farmers have higher suicide incidence rates than other men.
The researchers used data from the Irish Probable Suicide Deaths Study (IPSDS) from 2015-2018 which included 2,349 coroner-determined suicides and research-determined suicides.
Male farmers/agricultural workers were compared with all other males 15 years and over in the dataset.
The researchers found that the probable suicide incidence rate for farmers over 65 years of age (29.2 deaths per 100,000) was over twice the rate for non-farmers (14.3 deaths per 100,000).