Record rainfall lashes mental health of stressed farmers
Downpours pile on the pressure
RECORD rainfall that ruined months of agri-business planning has threatened the mental health of underpressure farmers, it is claimed.
Award-winning farmer Shay Concannon (47), who previously wanted to end his life amid depression, warned that unrelenting weather conditions are a risk to life.
He said yesterday: “The last couple of months have been tough on farmers because of the weather.
“The bad weather really makes people feel down. The only thing you can do is talk to someone.
“Open up and get out there because it will help.
The weather is hard but you have to look after yourself.
“The weather puts them under pressure. There are farmers out there who are struggling mentally, physically, and financially and I’m worried about them.” He added: “I had loved farming and was out on the farm from four years of age.
“Farmers don’t want to talk about it and I didn’t want to talk about it, but you need to talk because it is the only way that you are going to get help.”
Shay is a dairy, suckler and beef farmer from Claregalway, Co Galway, and was short-listed as the 2010
FBD Young Farmer of the Year.
But two years later, he decided he wanted to end his life.
Shay grew up on the family farm and spent the majority of his day alone, minding the animals and looking after the land.
He said: “I knew there was something wrong. I wasn’t myself. I was finding it hard to do work. Everything was a struggle.
“I couldn’t get up and my wife [Mona] just knew there was something wrong with me.
“She said, ‘There’s something wrong with you and we need to go to the doctor’.
They said I had depression and asked if I wanted help. I said, ‘I definitely do’. I had been to the dark side before. I was really bad for a couple of years before that.
“I had myself convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I reached the stage where I was ending my life.
“One evening I was putting the cows in the shed and I was in the field and I just said, ‘I can’t do this any more’.
“I decided to make a phone call to my sister to say goodbye. She talked me down and said, ‘Don’t do it, I’ll get help’. She rang my wife.
“I spent days going to the psych ward in Galway and I just talked and talked.
“They gave me ways to cope with it and I am out the other side of it now.”
He added on RTE Radio 1: “I was always on my own. I liked it, but that was part of the problem.”