Isolation makes it tough for farmers
Farming can be a deadly business mentally, never mind the everpresent physical threats from the likes of tractors and quad bikes.
The lurking spectre of depression is top of many farmers’ minds as shown by the massive response to Taihape’s Dan Mickleson, who wrote about his struggle with it on the NZ Farming Facebook page.
Tracking figures show that what he had to say initially reached more than 130,000 people, and climbing.
Two things stood out for the sheep and beef farmer in his spiral into depression, he wrote: Animal welfare and the impact of bad weather, and the breakdown of a personal relationship.
Fraser Gordon said it was ‘‘triggers’’ like these that could ambush the unwary.
Add to that toxic brew isolation and a macho ‘‘harden-up’’ attitude towards life, and depression is often not far away, he said.
Gordon, who farms about 20 minutes out of Taihape, is on the Manawatu-Rangitikei Rural Family Support Trust as well as a vice president of ManawatuRangitikei Federated Farmers, which has about 700 members.
It was the young single blokes, doing things like shepherding in the backblocks, who were especially vulnerable, he said.
‘‘It can be really lonely for a lot of guys,’’ he said. ‘‘I think relationship breakups are 90 per cent the big one.’’
With rural pubs closing and vigilant police patrolling country roads farmworkers were scared to go out, so drank alone at home.
The trust does its best to help before a farmer takes the final fatal step by calling in the help of experts like counsellors and has ‘‘good yarn’’ workshops planned to tap into an even wider circle of rural professionals like veterinarians and stock and station agents.
Gordon said dairy farmers had their own vulnerabilities, sharpened by what went on in the media as debate raged over the environment and blame was loudly dished out for its problems.
Federated Farmers former provincial president James Stewart backed that up.
‘‘Sometimes it can be pretty mean out there, especially around the dairy industry.’’
But he added that if people ‘‘know their dark places, their danger zones’’ they could let light in where darkness is all they feel.