Mental health survey launched as farm issues intensify

It’s been a decade since Canadian farmers’ landmark mental health study quantified the undercurrent of anxiety and depression facing producers. So, over the past 10 years, has the situation improved? Become worse? That’s what new research aims to find out.

Prof. Andria Jones of the University of Guelph and her team are leading the study. This will be their third such survey; back in 2016, they surveyed 1,110 farmers across Canada, mostly from Ontario, to determine their mental wellbeing, then followed up in 2021. The 2016 study revealed that stress, anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion and burnout were all higher among farmers than among other populations.

Inside and outside of agriculture, the findings were jolting and downright alarming. The very people that Canadians count on for food production, one of the country’s most essential services, were struggling mightily. The research results prompted a flurry of discussions designed to figure out what was going wrong and how to address it. The follow-up study that took place in 2021 had a similar number of participants.

Again, the findings were alarming. This time, they were further accelerated by COVID: farmers with moderate to severe scores for any outcome before the pandemic reported worsening symptoms. As well, statistics for women were gathered for the first time. Results showed women fared significantly worse than men across all measures. More than twice as many women reported seeking mental health or substance use support during the pandemic than men.

The two studies succeeded in sparking momentum for change and action. Most lately, that’s resulted in the Canadian Centre for Agricultural Wellbeing and the National Farmer Wellness Network Crisis Line 1-866-FARMS01) unfolding. These measures havedirect ties to the research findings.

Now, with five more years having passed since the 2021 study, Jones and her team are again measuring farmers’ mental health status. They’ll be asking about depression, anxiety, burnout, suicidal thoughts, societal pressures and resilience, and more. Results from this online study, which takes under 30 minutes to complete and runs until the end of this March, will reflect how the current state of world affairs is impacting Canadian producers.

Jones anticipates a challenging situation.

“How do management decisions on the farm impact mental health, given specific sources of stress like extreme weather, emerging pests, politics, tariffs and upcoming trade negotiations and the pressure on supply management, among other realities that have piled on since our last survey?” she asks.

And it’s not all about so-called “big” farmers.