Farmscape for April 17, 2018

An Associate Professor with the University of Guelph says it's important for those involved in agriculture and those around them to be aware of the signs that indicate someone is facing excessive stress.
Research conducted by the University of Guelph showed Canadian farmers experience higher levels of stress, higher levels of anxiety, increased levels of depression and higher levels of burnout compared to other occupations and compared to the general population.
Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton, a Veterinarian and Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph, says any time we see changes in thoughts, feelings or behavior it's a warning sign.

Clip-Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton-University of Guelph:
There's ubiquitous stresses that all farmers experience regardless of their occupation.
If you think about changing weather and changing climate, government regulations, industry regulations, financial stresses, changing markets, changing prices, public scrutiny, animal activism.
There's just an endless list of stresses they're experiencing.
Some stress is good.
We need some stress to be healthy but unfortunately a lot of our farmers are living in the red in the area of high stress and this has impacts on their wellness.
It impacts their mental wellness, it impacts their physical wellness, it impacts their relationships with the family who are also their employees or their co-workers.
It can impact their ability to take care of their animals if they're in a really dark place of depression or anxiety and it impacts their farms and their financial bottom line so it's pretty all encompassing.

Dr. Jones-Bitton says we're all different so the signs that we might not be coping well are different for different people so it's important that we pay attention to that and to recognize signs when we're slipping.
She says some people notice changes in their sleep patterns, inability to fall asleep or waking up and not being able to get back to sleep, perhaps turning to alcohol  or snapping or being short with loved ones.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork