Lisa Ashworth,VP Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick (submitted by AANB)
They are supposed to be tough, resilient and always hard-working, but sometimes farmers need some help coping with the same issues most of us have, stress, anxiety and depression.
The Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick says a recent report from Farm Credit Canada shows 45 percent of farmers registered high levels of perceived stress.
VP of the Alliance, Lisa Ashworth, herself a farmer, says it is no surprise to her.
“You’ve got trade wars, trade deals and we’ve got weather and we have to accept that we can’t control everything, even so, we are managers by nature, reach out if you need to realize like everybody else we have good days and bad days,” stated Ashworth.
Ashworth says some counsellors will suggest people get out of the situation causing them stress, but when you are a farmer you live in your workplace so that is not a reasonable solution.
As for online counselling services that are available through agriculture federations in some maritime provinces that isn’t always a good option in New Brunswick.
Ashworth said, “There is starting to be more of a network put together and just examining what the resources are and what needs to happen because as soon as I talk about online resources the fact that we don’t have reliable rural broadband in most parts of the country makes those resources unavailable.”
Ashworth also says it isn’t just farmers themselves that can end up with stress, anxiety and depression, it can be their entire families.
