Depression a daily battle
‘‘It fizzes out over the top like a big explosion. You don’t mean for it to happen but sometimes things just get on top of you.’’
Paige Hocking
‘‘He’s the one who gets me through the hard times.’’
She also has another close friend who she can talk to if she’s having a bad day.
‘‘But it is difficult because the job always comes first so sometimes you have to hold back on your emotions or
Paige Hocking takes it one day at a time in battling depression while working on a dairy farm.
She seldom makes long-term plans because she never knows when the black dog might wander in.
It all starts in the morning when she wakes up on the 125-hectare farm she works as a dairy assistant near Waiterimu in Waikato.
The 21-year-old was diagnosed with depression three years ago. She describes its effects as like shaking up a bottle of soft drink.
‘‘It fizzes out over the top like a big explosion. You don’t mean for it to happen but sometimes things just get on top of you.’’
It means she has her good and bad days. One day she remembers vividly; she confided in her former boss about her mental health.
‘‘I was having a s... morning, and my boss at the time asked what was wrong and I told him – it was how I was truthfully feeling – and he told me his opinion on depression.
‘‘They weren’t good opinions. He told me that depression is something that is just made up and if you go to the doctors and you say you’re feeling sad, they give anyone pills.’’
For Hocking, having it dismissed this way was a kick in the guts.
It is an attitude she is convinced is common among the farming industry because farm owners see employing a staff member with mental health issues as a risk.
Yet her current boss is hugely supportive, as is her partner. your feelings to get the job done.’’
Her message to farm owners employing staff with mental heath issues is simple: Be supportive.
‘‘If they are having a bad day, don’t keep pestering them to find out what the problem is and give them time to themselves.’’
Farming was a career choice she said surprised some because its isolation and long hours can exacerbate people struggling with mental health.
‘‘If you have a passion for something you’ve got to do it.’’
Farming’s geographical isolation made counselling a challenge because of the distance she has to travel for appointments and the time it took to get there when juggling farming duties.
‘‘It doesn’t stop and you have to make time out of your day to do something.’’
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to coping with depression because everyone was different. This also made solutions extremely challenging, she said.
‘‘Everyone’s different and everyone has different stages and forms of depression.’’
Anti depressants may be an option for some, but Hocking prefers counselling. To that end, more resources needed to be allocated to get rural mental health workers out in the field who have a basic understanding of farming.
‘‘Putting posters up and putting something up on Facebook is good, but it’s not really achieving anything. It’s just another ad.’’
The effects of depression go wider than just the individual when it comes to farming because the business must keep going, animals must be fed and cows must be milked, she said.