Farmer health: dealing with depression

Christmas is a time when Joe Parlon from The Leap, near Roscrea, begins to pay extra attention to his mental health.

Because two separate bouts of depression began in the month of January – one in 2006 and one in 2016 – as the stress “tsunami” of calving season loomed before him.

He now sees his GP about upping his medication slightly as a buffer against depression kicking in again.

“It keeps me well and it’s a plan that has worked for us,” Joe says. “When I got the second bout in New Year 2016, I hadn’t done that. I’d been in such good form around Christmas 2015 that I thought I didn’t need it – but looking back, that was a bit of a blunder.”

Joe, 53, has no trouble talking about depression.

It’s important that everyone knows how it can hit you. Some people don’t understand what it’s like or what people go through with it, so the more it’s talked about the better. While the stigma is going there’s still too much of it around.

Joe believes it is important to know the physical symptoms of depression, so others will know what’s happening to them, if they are affected.

Dramatic physical changes

He lists how he was affected by the symptoms that changed his personality and appearance to the point where Mary, his wife, felt that it was like living with a stranger.

The changes began each time with loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, anxiety, loss of confidence and sense of humour, inability to concentrate and sometimes tremors.

“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was always an out-and-about sort of person, involved in the IFA and GAA and there I was wanting to go out to nothing! Even if someone drove into the yard and went into the house I’d stay outside. That wasn’t like me.”

Joe Parlon, The Leap, Roscrea, Co Tipperary. \ Donal O' Leary

As well as losing two stone over a period of six weeks, he was thrown by things that normally wouldn’t stress him too much.

“A calf being sick – that’d have my heart pounding and I’d be checking on it 40 times a day. I was going around with a lump in my stomach all the time.

"Even the way I walked changed. I’m good to walk straight up normally, but when the depression hit you’d be walking bent down. You get this kind of weight on your shoulders as if something is nearly pushing you down all the time.”

He didn’t have much energy either, due to lack of sleep and night sweats and itching due to a flare-up of dermatitis, which added to his discomfort.

“After all that I’d be worn out after doing an hour’s work,” he says.

Saw a doctor quickly

The Parlons went to the doctor within two weeks of Joe feeling low. “We thought we would be able to arrest the progress of it,” Mary says. “I was watching the change in Joe and I couldn’t understand it.”

Medication followed, some of which Joe felt helped and some that didn’t.

“It seemed like a lot. The anti-depressants did help over time, but the sleeping tablets didn’t work for me and one of the other tablets made me feel zombie like and gave me weird dreams.

You learn that medication isn’t an instant fix and that different medications suit different people, but also that you can stay well if they find one that suits you.

As the spring of 2006 moved on and Joe slipped further into depression, he couldn’t physically handle even the smallest job without help.

The couple were heavily reliant on their then 16-year-old son Darragh and on family and very supportive neighbours to keep the farm going.

Along with their two other sons, Declan and Eoghan, then aged 14 and 10, they all managed as best they could while Joe spent five weeks in St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin.

“I held out that time until the calving was almost over but I knew I had to get away for a while to get better,” Joe says.

Anxious to return home

While he was advised to stay for eight, five-day weeks he was impatient to get home.

“The first week was total rest, but I needed that because I was exhausted. I was put on more medication, and within a week Mary could see a glimmer coming back into my eyes – they’d been sunken in my head since the depression started.

“I helped myself as much as I could, because I wanted to get well. I was never into walking, but I took to it then – walking round the gardens and the city with my brother.

"I thought I would have more one-to-one therapy, given what the stay was costing us via our medical insurance. I found the stay shocking tedious in some ways, but there’s no doubt about it, I did get better in that place and I was well looked after.”

The Joe I knew was back

By the end of summer 2006 Joe was feeling better. “It was like the Joe I knew was back,” Mary says.

Ten years of wellness followed, and Mary emphasises that, to stay well after being discharged, Joe “religiously and continuously” took the prescribed low level of medication.

He also cut down on committee work and had regular check-ups and, apart from a few times where he dipped a little – for instance, during a wet August – he was in good form, back doing everything he’d done before.

Two things helped Joe when he admitted he had depression, he says: an uncle disclosing that he too had bouts of depression over the years and talking to a farming neighbour who was also affected by it.

“It was a turning point for us, being able to talk to someone whose story was so similar. He had recovered from it and I felt that I would too.”

It was also a plus that Joe was able to ask for help.“You have to look for it, because if you can’t you’re stuck, going nowhere. It’s so important to talk about it and do that.”

Return of depression 10 years later

The depression hitting again after 10 years, in New Year 2016, was a shock for the family. Joe had been working harder than usual during the normally quiet months prior to that, as a land purchase was going through.

Looking back, the Parlons see that this extra work may have left him less prepared for the challenge of the calving season.

Not upping the medication, as he usually did, may have been the other error. Whatever the reason, depression, he says, hit him “like a brick” by mid-January.

I think it was even worse the second time. I felt so low. It was like mental torture, with no let-up. At night I’d just stare blankly at the TV, saying nothing. I felt like I was a failure.

"I couldn’t read papers or bear the radio on in the tractor or the calf-house, like I normally did. I’d lost so much weight so quickly, too, that people didn’t recognise me.”

An immediate visit to the GP led to hopes that extra medication would ease the depression but it wasn’t to be.

“I kept going, with help, though, until the May, when I knew I needed to be in hospital. By that stage I was a physical and mental wreck.”

You can't walk away from a farm

While the Parlons were advised then that removing the stressor – dairy farming – might be an answer, it wasn’t something they felt they could do.

“I don’t think doctors understood that you just can’t walk away from a farm,” Mary says. “We knew no other life. The solution wasn’t as easy for us as it looked on paper.”

Their youngest son, Eoghan, then in first year in UCD, was called upon this time to help run the farm while Joe was in hospital, as his older brothers were working.

They both acknowledge the help that was, and Darragh’s in 2006.

They all had more responsibility than they should have had at a young age, but that was the way it happened. I know I leaned on them a lot.

Mary knows that Joe’s depression has had an impact on her too. “I was called on to help out a lot on the farm, and they were lonely enough times … Often people would ring asking how Joe was, and I’d be hoping someone would ask how I was too, in the middle of it all.”

Mentioning that they come across very much as a team, as they detail what they’ve been through, they say the depression did cause strain in their relationship the first time round, but that there was more understanding the second time.

“Mary couldn’t understand, for example, why I wouldn’t come into the house to talk to people, but I couldn’t. It was all part of it – another symptom.”

Mary acknowledges that Joe was lucky to have a great support network of family, friends and neighbours. “It must be so hard for someone to recover who doesn’t have that kind of network and isn’t able to talk about it.”

What didn't help

What didn’t help Joe when he wasn’t well was people saying “pull yourself together” or implying that there is no such thing as depression, he says.

“Hearing something like that when you know you’re not well is hard to take. The symptoms of depression are very real.”

Recovery has been a real joy though. “The day you know that you’ve started to enjoy life again is a wonderful day. It’s like the light turning on again.”

Joe recently started a Life Skills cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) course two nights’ a week with AWARE in Tullamore.

“It’s very good. It teaches you that how what you think affects how you behave and that if you change how you think and behave it’ll change how you’re feeling.”

His message to others is that you can recover from depression, that it’s important to know the symptoms and to give medication a chance to “kick-in”, which can take as long as six weeks.

Having social interests outside the farm is also important and not getting wound up in work.

“I have huge concerns for young dairy farmers taking on all this extra work,” he says. “They can think about nothing else, only milking more cows. Not everyone is going to get depressed, but they are going to put themselves at risk if they keep taking on too much.”

Supporting a loved one?

Aware now runs a relatives and friends Programme. This is a new programme specifically designed for those supporting a loved one with depression or bipolar disorder, Jamie Goode of Aware says. “It teaches coping skills and tools on how best to support someone, but also has a strong focus on self-care for the supporter, highlighting how important it is for people to also look after themselves.”

Aware support Line 1800 80 48 48 or visit www.aware.ie.

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