December, 2019
Page 4
SARDA News
Mental Health on the Farm
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mental-health crisis is blanketing farms and ranches across the country, and even though experts say the rate of mental illness exceeds those in other professions, Canada does not have a cohesive plan to track or address it. About 45 per cent of farmers across Canada have high stress, while 58 per cent meet the threshold for anxiety and 35 per cent meet the standard for depression, exceeding levels in the general population, according to research by Andria JonesBitton, a veterinarian, epidemiologist and professor at the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph. Her research also showed farmers are
more vulnerable to burn out – high emotional exhaustion, high cynicism and low professional efficacy – than the general population. About 67 per cent of the farmers she surveyed scored lower than people outside the industry when it came to resilience, which reflects the ability to cope with stress and bounce back from lows. The agriculture and agri-food industry contributes roughly $110-billion annually to Canada’s GDP and accounts for one in eight jobs in the country, according to the federal government. Yet investments in keeping farmers healthy have lagged. Demand for mental-health programming exceeds supply – if it exists at all. Furthermore, it
