How these farmers are fighting back against loneliness and depression

On the morning we reach Sean Stanford on the phone, he's having a good day. 

It's only 8:00 a.m. but he's already been up for a few hours. It's harvest season, which means there's a lot to be done on his farm, and not a lot of time left to do it. But Sean doesn't seem fazed. He's cracking jokes and doesn't seem to have a care in the world. 

But remember, this is a good day. 

And as Sean knows far too well, when you live with anxiety and depression, that can change in a heartbeat.

"Yesterday was a really bad day for me," he says. "Sometimes instead of me running my thoughts, my thoughts run me. You just get stuck inside your own head with 'what ifs' and you can't stop what direction they're going. And it's scary."

The 'what ifs'

Sean is a third-generation farmer near the town of Magrath, Alberta, and those 'what ifs' have been around for as long as he can remember. 

What if I don't get the crop off in time? What if I can't make my mortgage payment?  What if I don't have enough money to pay the fuel bill? What if it rains? What if it snows?

Until one day, for Sean, it was too much.

"Three years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a tearing pain in my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. It was crushing, my arm was numb. I swore I was going to die."

Turns out, Sean didn't have a problem with his heart. He was having an anxiety attack. The first of many to come. 

"I remember thinking, 'Anxiety, what even is that?"

Mental health was never talked about on the farm. Sean didn't know anyone who had anxiety or depression, so he didn't feel comfortable sharing his experiences.

"Farmers are supposed to be strong, tough, no BS people. So when something bothers you when you're a farmer, it makes you feel weaker than you should be." 

But when you're isolated on a farm, working long hours and struggling with something you're trying to keep hidden, what do you do?

It was scary to reach out for the first time

"Connectivity with a cell phone is huge. Either texting, making a phone call, going on Twitter," says Sean before pausing, "It was scary to reach out the first time"

But lucky for him, he did. In the last three years, Sean has connected with farmers from all across the country who are talking openly about their struggles with mental health. 

Lesley Kelly and Christi Friesen are two people from that community whom he now calls friends. 

Lesley Kelly

Lesley and her family run a grain farm in central Saskatchewan, and she is the co-founder of Do More Agriculture, the first Canadian mental health organization aimed specifically at farmers. 

Three years ago, she found her husband Matt lying on the kitchen floor having a panic attack. Just like Sean, he thought he was dying.

It was the wake-up call they needed.  

Lesley and Matt began researching 'farmers and mental health' on the Internet, but to their surprise little showed up. That's when they decided to record a live video sharing their mental health struggles, and post it on her blog. 

"We wanted to talk publicly about it, because we knew we weren't alone," says Lesley. "But we did think, what will our friends and neighbours think of us? Will our community accept this? What if our rented land gets taken away from us? Those are some of the reason people don't talk about it, but they are the exact reasons why we should." 

The response to the video was overwhelming. Thousands of friends and fellow farmers reached out, offering words of support and sharing their own mental health stories. 

One of the people who saw that video was Christi Friesen. 

Christi Friesen

Christi and her family own Rebellion Farms in Peace Country, Alberta. When she woke up one morning in September and saw 15 cm of snow on her deck, she completely broke down. The stress of bad weather, rising bills and a poor harvest had finally been too much. 

"I started bawling. All I could think was, how are we going to pay bills, how are we going to pay FCC [Farm Credit Canada]. It's not thousands of dollars we owe, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars that are on the line. Your livelihood is on the line, and it's currently buried under six inches of snow in September."

Like Sean, Christi's anxiety crept up over time, until her husband began to notice she wasn't acting like herself. 

My mom and dad always said, "Never shame anyone who is trying to better themselves"- Christi Friesen on the importance of ending the stigma around mental health struggles

"He said to me, I don't remember the last time I saw you smile or laugh and that's not your personality. You're normally bubbly, talkative and social. He noticed personality changes where I would just get up, look out the window and start crying and it's not even 8 am.  If he's telling me I'm not myself, it's a red flag."

Christi went to see her doctor for help. She found medications that worked, started trying to get more sleep, and began meeting more farmers wrestling with their mental health. 

"My mom and dad alway said, never shame anyone who is trying to better themselves."

So as Sean gets ready to head out on his field, he does it knowing that Christi, Lesley and Matt are about to head out onto theirs as well. They may be thousands of kilometers apart, but they no longer feel alone.

They've found a community. A safe place where mental health can be talked about as naturally as the weather or a piece of broken down farm equipment. 

And just knowing that helps make those 'bad days' feel a little less lonely. 
 

Originally aired in September, 2020