Farmers need to open up, not harden up

NZ Herald Cathy Stephenson, 17 November 2015

Most of us know that life on a farm isn’t always easy – often far from it. Long hours. Cold winters. Dry summers. Falling prices. But I suspect not everyone knows quite how tough it can be. In 2013, there were 22 farmer suicides in New Zealand – that’s a rate 20 per cent higher than in any other working sector. Of those deaths, 15 were men. 6 were under 24 years.

For Matt Shirtcliffe and his family, this is about much more than statistics. Matt’s wife, Mary, a former farmer, died from suicide in May this year. She was 51.

In August, Matt, who owns an agribusiness advertising agency in Auckland, addressed 120 farming and business rural professionals at a conference. He spoke about the issue of mental health in agricultural communities. His messages are clear:

•  A life of farming brings with it particular, unique stressors that can contribute to the development of mental illness, especially depression.
•  The physical and psychological isolation often experienced by farmers makes seeking help more difficult
•  Farmers don’t take their lives because they’re going through tough times – they take their lives because those tough times can trigger depression, which left untreated can be life-threatening.
•  Asking farmers potentially tough questions about their wellbeing early and often might enable them to acknowledge there are problems, long before they manifest as serious depression or suicidal thoughts.

Matt’s wife Mary grew up on the family farm in Dannevirke. For much of her adult life she worked there – farming sheep and beef. Later, she moved into rural banking, but retained her farm ownership, and her connections and friendships in the farming world. She knew farmers. She identified as a farmer. She also knew depression, having suffered from it for several years.

Matt says that people in farming communities have a different type of stress from the rest of us. Whereas most of us can leave our work pressures behind at the end of the day, for most farmers their office is at home. It is all too easy to work at night, checking on the numbers, doing the paperwork. When things aren’t going well, it’s harder to escape, physically or mentally. The sleep deprivation that comes with the job, especially around calving and lambing time, can compound the issues – working as another contributing factor towards poor mental and physical health.

Financial pressures are almost certainly contributing to the particular stressors facing these communities – many farmers are already saddled with astronomical debt at young ages, just to ensure their herds keep going, let alone pay their staff or draw an income. Year in, year out, low payments can lead to uncertainty about future security, with no guaranteed upturn in the economy to compensate for the years of lost earnings.

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Our stereotypical view of the “average” New Zealand farmer doesn’t help this issue – the stoical “she’ll be right” mentality is often far from accurate, and certainly doesn’t encourage or enable those suffering from depression to come forward and ask for help. Matt says one of his catchphrases over the last few months has been to encourage farmers to “speak up, not harden up” – not perhaps an easy thing to do when you are used to keeping it all inside.

When it comes to asking for help, other barriers exist too:

* The physical distance farmers may need to travel from their farm to the nearest medical practice or counselling service, and the time required to get there. That physical isolation can also act as a barrier to social connection, making getting together with mates and family off-farm to talk things through more difficult.

* Lack of social contact – working alone may mean that there is no-one to share the bad days with. Matt says that this type of isolation can be the cause of small issues escalating to seemingly unsurmountable ones, “there’s no-one to act as the circuit breaker at the end of the day”.

* Lack of awareness of the issues: Some farmers don’t know who to turn to for help or advice when it comes to their mental wellbeing, except perhaps when things get desperate. Public campaigns like John Kirwan’s depression.org, which has a whole section devoted to farmers telling their real stories about overcoming depression, have enabled us to come a long way towards acceptance of mental illness, and the range of online services and self-help tools available now is certainly helpful. Still, there’s no single solution, and as Matt says, at times, nothing beats a face-to-face catch up over a cup of tea. Rural professionals can play a key role in encouraging farmers to go online and access the help that is available.

Matt and his family’s awful experience has been the catalyst for some positive new projects. He has teamed up with a primary health provider WellSouth, looking at training rural professionals to ask screening “well-being” questions to all farmers through their GoodYarn programme. Already run as a successful pilot, it’s now being rolled out nationally, targeting groups such as rural bankers, seed merchants and dairy company reps – anyone who has regular contact with a farmer, and might be able to initiate that conversation. By taking the questions to the farmers, not only will this help normalise well-being as an issue that we should be freely discussing, but it overcomes the barriers such as distance and access.

Good help, advice and information is available. Groups like the Rural Support Trusts are committed to informing farmers and supporting them through tough times. FarmStrong meanwhile is doing lots to promote healthy farmer wellbeing; on the basis that prevention is more effective than cure.

If you are worried about your own well-being, or that of a loved one, friend or colleague, please seek help from your GP, local counsellor or one of the agencies below:

* The Mental Health Foundation 09 623 4812
* Lifeline 0800 543 354
* Depression Helpline 0800 111 757
* Suicide Crisis Helpline 0508 828 865
* farmstrong.co.nz
* rural-support.org.nz
* depression.org.nz

Our  BOP rural support contact person is Derek Spratt Ph 0800 787 254