Good morning, honourable members. Thank you very much for your time today.
I'm a registered clinical psychologist in Saskatchewan, and a professor of psychology and a researcher at the University of Regina. I have experience in mental health, particularly acute and chronic stress including post-traumatic stress disorder, and I will be speaking to some of the published literature on farmer mental health this morning.
According to Statistics Canada, at any given time approximately 10% of the Canadian population meets criteria for one or more mental health disorders. In 2005, a peer-reviewed literature review article evidenced farmers as experiencing one of the highest industry rates of suicide, but also indicated that they may not have been experiencing higher rates of mental health illnesses.
More recently in 2018, a systematic literature review and meta-analysis by Klingelschmidt and colleagues was published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results indicated a pooled effect size of 1.48 times excess suicide risk among agricultural, forestry and fishery workers. Those results differ from a 1999 epidemiological study of Canadian farmers that indicated, after adjusting for age differences, that provincial suicide rates among farm operators were generally lower than or equivalent to those observed in the comparison populations of Canadian males.
Part of the difference may be due to climate change as indicated by a recent peer-reviewed article that evidenced that climate change and drought can negatively impact Canadian mental health, particularly for farmers impacted by drought. Over the last two decades, the climate changes, whether anthropogenic or not, as well as highly dynamic economic conditions and the progressive shifts towards mega-farms, have all produced substantial levels of uncertainty associated with critical components of farmer livelihood.
As indicated by two 2016 peer-reviewed review articles, higher levels of uncertainty are inherently perceived as threatening, particularly when associated with perceptions of realizable risk. Moreover, difficulties with uncertainty have been robustly associated with several mental health disorders.
There is also evidence from a 2013 peer-reviewed article that male farmers may be especially reluctant to access mental health care for a variety of reasons including stigma and limited accessibility of evidence-based care. Part of that stigma has been evidenced in a 2014 peer-reviewed article as being associated with potentially toxic notions of masculinity that may interact with perceptions that male farmers are primarily responsible for the success or failure of the farm despite having relatively limited agency over things like weather.
In addition, farmers are often relatively isolated, meaning that opportunities for social support may be limited, which can further increase mental health risks. The complements of challenges facing farmers including perceptions of masculinity, unstable work, uncertainty, diverse barriers to accessing care and limited social support networks are all likely to increase the probability for mental health disorders and death by suicide.
The perceived daily stressors also sometimes referred to as daily hassles, when coupled with a significant negative impact event like a flood or drought, may also exacerbate the potential mental health risks.
Accordingly, tailored mental health services and supports may be very beneficial for supporting farmer and farm family mental health.
Thank you.