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Almost one quarter of all Irish farmers have suicidal ideation and suicide in the Irish farming community is a significant area of concern, a webinar on suicide in the farming community heard on Tuesday.
Psychotherapist, lecturer and grief and loss specialist Liz Gleeson told the webinar - hosted by HUGG and Embrace FARM - that this means that farmers think about suicide as a possible option to get away from their problems or overwhelming feelings.
“People bereaved by suicide within the farming community are often not afforded the same time and space to grieve – sometimes the responsibility of the farm falls immediately on their shoulders, compounding the impact of grief and trauma,” she said.
HUGG is Ireland’s national suicide bereavement charity and the online event was the first of its kind in Ireland, bringing together HUGG's evidence-based knowledge of suicide bereavement with the practical and emotional supports offered by the Embrace FARM network.
Factors causing risk to farm suicides
The reason why farmers are more at risk of suicide compared with the general population is because farm life is often really socially isolating, the work can be relentless and it’s often hard to get any real break, she explained.
Many farmers also work alone and bear the burden of responsibility for the farm alone. Sometimes crop and herd outcomes can be out of farmers' control, causing a loss of agency, she added.
“Life stressors among Irish farmers are such that suicide within the farming community is significantly higher than among the general population.”
Increasing pressures
Co-founder of Embrace FARM Norma Rohan said: “All of us in the farming community will know somebody who has died by suicide. It has taken a while for the agri sector to catch up with that on an official basis.”
The pressures that face farmers today are mounting each day, she explained.
“With changing regulations, climate action, the unpredictability of the weather, producing a product where price consistently changes up and down without a farmer's input, breakdown in heard health.
"To be hit with just one of these things is tough to cope with, but to be hit with a multitude of things one year after another really takes a special kind of person to not buckle under that pressure,” she said.
Government and State agencies are currently working on researching what the impact of death by suicide is on the farming community.
Embrace FARM is currently supporting 400 farm families in its support network.
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