Agriland Media Group is delighted to collaborate with Agri Aware to bring you the ‘Sowing Wellbeing in Every Field Series’.
On a blissful autumn morning, Andrew Bonham, opened up about his mental health journey, how it affected his early adulthood years, and how he has come out the other side of it despite the ongoing stigma around seeking help for it.
The Westmeath native, who comes from a sheep farm and is a sales specialist with Meath Farm Machinery, shared his story in the hope that it will help someone else.
Speaking on his early life, Andew told Agri Aware: “I grew up on a sheep farm in Co. Westmeath and growing up, I always had a grá for engineering and machinery.
“This love saw me pursue a career in that area where I am now a sales specialist for Meath Farm Machinery – which I really enjoy, working with people and machinery.”
Talking about where his mental health struggles began, Andrew said it was back when he was in school when he tended to get in “trouble and act out a lot”.
Andrew said: “I didn’t understand why I was doing that (getting in trouble and acting out), but despite that, it never really raised too much concern at that time and I ended up getting on and heading to college to study agricultural engineering in IT Tralee.”
At this time, when he started full-time work and making money, Andrew’s mental health started to deteriorate.
Andrew said: “I started, like many do in their early to mid-20s, spending the money I was earning at weekends going out socialising and having a few drinks.
“Slowly I got into a routine and the week after the weekend would be a struggle and I’d be just waiting for the weekend to come again so I could repeat, which was doing harm to me.
“That led me to overthinking, becoming paranoid and getting stuck in a rut that persisted throughout my 20s.”
It wasn’t until a friend of Andrew’s reached out and told him that he sought and found help, which Andrew would go on to seek too.
Andrew added: “My friend was struggling with his mental health and reached out to therapist. He encouraged me to make contact with him and I made an appointment.
“It wasn’t anything like I though it would be; it was basically having a chat like you would do in someone’s sitting room say.”
Andrew said going to therapy has provided him with “the tools to look after his mental health”.
He said: “It would be like trying to fix a tractor without any tools, you wouldn’t be able to do much. So how can you fix your mental health without the tools to do so?
“If you go and see someone like I did, they will give you the tools to look after your mental health.”
After two years of therapy, Andrew said he can identify patterns that are beginning to happen and identify why they are occurring and is tooled to deal with them now.
Normalising reaching out for help and getting it is a must Andrew said.
He added: “People don’t want to talk about it. If you said you were going to you the doctor, nothing would be said of it, but if you said you were going for therapy for your mental health people would be wondering why you’d be doing that. It needs to be normalised.”
Andrew said his life is now a lot easier since he got help he needed. He added: “If I was to meet my younger self, I’d say to him, don’t panic you’ll get there and figure it out.”