Farming special - Day 1: Suicide and mental health
The Irish Examiner/ICMSA survey on farming attitudes found more than half of all farmers have been impacted by suicide, with 16% saying they had experienced it either in their immediate or wider family.
One in five farmers between the age of 35 and 44 said they had an immediate connection with suicide, while some 42% of farmers between the age of 55 and 64 said they had experienced suicide in the local community or among neighbours
Geographically, there was a large disparity between some of the areas surveyed. More than eight out of 10 surveyed at the National Open Day in Leitrim said they had been impacted by suicide. However, less than a quarter of farmers in Dungarvan in Waterford said they had any experience of someone dying by suicide.
Ireland currently has the fourth highest suicide rate in Europe, with 10 people taking their own life every week. Mental Health Minister Kathleen Lynch recently admitted the Government is now “very concerned” about the number of people taking their own lives.
Commenting on the findings, ICMSA president John Comer admitted that the increasing withdrawal of services from rural Ireland may be a contributory factor “I’m not saying that the gradual withdrawal of services and social infrastructure from rural Ireland is a cause of the terrible plague of suicides,” he said. “But it perhaps is a cause, or at least a contributory factor, to that sense of rural isolation that is unanimously identified by groups working in area as being a massively negative factor working against overall mental health.”
Mr Comer said “nothing terrified and saddens” small farming communities like suicide and that the ICMSA was working with suicide awareness groups such as Pieta House and SeeChange to try and work on a solution to the problem.
“We all know, and should remember, older men and women overwhelmed by a sudden rush of pain and despair,” said Mr Comer. “We all know, and should remember, that tragic instant when we hear the desperate news and the sadness and astonishment as we were reminded that no-one is immune to the fatal infection and that it can strike in the corridors of state as surely as on a lonely farm.”
The farming community was shocked in 2012 when farmer and Fine Gael’s deputy spokesman on agriculture Shane McEntee died by suicide. The issue was also raised last year when the impact of the fodder crisis was cited as one of the main factors behind the suspected deaths by suicide of seven West Clare farmers.
Local farming representatives revealed at the time that the lives of three farmers who were at risk of suicide were saved after intervention.
The social ties that bind us to our mental health
I WOULD imagine that non-farming or non-rural readers will struggle to comprehend the statistic that half of farmers have been impacted by suicide.
However, for those of us travelling around rural Ireland and talking to farmer and rural development groups, the statistic does not come as a complete surprise.
I have been honoured to serve as president of the ICMSA, and the role has brought me to every corner of the state. But I can say with absolute certainty, that nothing terrifies and saddens small farming communities like suicide does and, most specifically, an unforeseen, ‘out-of-the-blue’, suicide where a person with no history of depression or mental health issues takes his or her own life and plunges an unsuspecting family into a lifetime of grief and relentless self-doubt, and the wider parish or community into a spasm of fear and terror that is actually tangible.
It’s difficult to imagine the terror that families feel in these circumstances. The fear is one thing, but nearly as bad is the helplessness; the crippling doubt that we can do anything, and the terrible suspicion that something is happening beneath the surface that we can’t see, but which is taking away our loved ones — often in front of our very eyes.
Nor does this curse confine itself to our youth. We all know, and should remember, older men and women overwhelmed by a sudden rush of pain and despair.
It seems to me — and the ICMSA is working with Pieta House and SeeChange on this very subject — that even if we cannot identify that one last terminal impulse, we can certainly see that better mental health in general has got to be the best antidote to the attack of despair and self-doubt and loneliness.
And without for one second turning this commentary into any kind of special plea, I must point out that, as the level of services available in rural communities drops (in many instances into a state of non-existence), it’s absolutely true and certain that the opportunities for the ordinary, everyday, neighbourly encounters, that are the fabric of any healthy community, drop away and disappear too.
The creameries went a generation ago. But now the post office might be gone and the postman uses a post-box at the top of the passage, so you never see him or her any more.
Or maybe you got a message that the guard wanted to see you or you had to get something signed, and off you went into the village to see them.
But now the local barracks is closed. So is the local bank. And the local District Veterinary Office. And the local pub.
No amount of faster broadband — though it is an essential tool for farmers — or social media can ever take the place of vibrant communities. We have to have places to meet and talk and interact with the people who live around us.
I’m not saying the gradual withdrawal of services and social infrastructure from rural Ireland is the cause of the terrible plague of suicides. But it is, perhaps, at least a contributory factor.
I believe absolutely that that means we have to actively work towards and to support the farming and agri-food sectors that were, are, and will be, the economic backbone of those communities. We must also realise that providing services and options for farming communities isn’t any kind of burden or expense — but actually the sensible, rational, and healthy way of keeping rural dwellers involved and intrinsic to our debates and wellbeing.
