Youth talk mental health at 4-H summit
MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES ON the farm are not restricted to operators, or even their spouses … they affect their kids, too. And these challenges happen all over the world.
That’s one reason the Global 4-H Network Summit dedicated a session to mental health and awareness when leaders from 70 countries converged in Ottawa this week. This is 4-H’s second global summit, with more than 500 4-H youth, professionals and volunteer leaders expected.
Yesterday, the final day of the summit, included a presentation from the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs called “Mental Health – Breaking the Stigma – Are Ewe OK?”
This session highlights a program and social media campaign the association started last year in response to pressures on the UK farming industry.
In Scotland, statistics show nine out of 10 young people facing poor mental health receive negative treatment from others.
Scottish association chair Stuart Jamieson cited estimates that one-quarter
of its county’s population will face mental health challenges during their lifetime.
He says if those same figures apply to the young farmers’ association – and there’s no reason to think they don’t – that’s more than 800 of its members.
So the “Are Ewe OK?” program “aims to educate members about mental health, so they have a better understanding of the topic, can help others, understand that mental health is just as important as physical health and so that we can break the stigma surrounding the topic,” it says.
And, it notes, making use of social media means such campaigns don’t require big budgets, another point that will be made at the summit.
Erin Smith, 4-H Canada program director and 2017 Global 4-H Network Summit Program co-chair, says 4-H, as an organization, believes in promoting the health and well-being – both mental and physical – of youth and their communities.
“Through our positive youth development model, we are empowering young people to address many issues they care about and find solutions to the challenges they face,” she says.
“As our youth members tell us, mental health is an important component of healthy living. It’s important for us to have focus at the Global Summit on the Environment and Healthy Living, one of our key programmatic areas to support dialogue among youth leaders and professionals.”
Mental health awareness continues to gain momentum. Research emerged from a survey of more than 1,000 farmers by University of Guelph researcher Andria Jones-Bitton last year showing as many as one-third may be suffering from depression.
The survey found 45 per cent of respondents had high stress. Another 58 per cent were classified with varying levels of anxiety, and 35 per cent with depression.
Overall, those figures were two to four times higher than farmers studied in the United Kingdom and Norway, Jones-Bitton said.
That news was like a dam waiting to break. Headlines have flooded farm and urban media about the matter, and the reasons behind it – isolation and loneliness, among them, and a general unwillingness by the stoic farm community to discuss such intimate matters.
But the mood has changed, and mental health is near or at the top of farm group agendas everywhere – including the agendas of the very young.