Rather than sharing stats with you, my goal was to share a story. I facilitated a panel discussion with two incredible young women, Kim Keller and Lesley Kelly, from the Do More Agriculture Foundation earlier this year at a farm tech meeting in Edmonton.
We had no idea how many producers would be interested in this conversation. We had no idea what the turnout was going to be, but the organizer wanted that conversation to happen.
We were put in a large conference room and we watched it fill up with faces, some that we knew and many that we didn't know. All were there to have this conversation.
I planned to start with three questions, each one was an ever-larger net to get the audience to see the impact of mental illness.
My first question was, who knows someone who has died from suicide? Virtually the entire room stood up. It still makes the hair on my neck stand up. I was floored, devastated and broken-hearted, but I was standing in front of a room of hundreds of people and we had to keep on going. Thankfully I was with two of the strongest, most impressive women I have ever met. Together we talked and shared about mental health in agriculture.
After the session was done and we had collected ourselves a bit, I was headed to my next session and saw an old-timer who was making a beeline towards me. I thought, oh boy, what's this gent going to say to me?
As he got to me he extended his hand and said, “Thank you. Thank you for your session and thank you for saving my life.” I bumbled off some sort of “pardon me?” type of comment, and he proceeded with what seemed like had been a well-thought-out explanation. He said, “After hearing that presentation, I'm going to find a professional to talk to. I'm having a hard time and didn't want to admit it out loud. Thank you.”
That ensured that I will be doing everything I can to help people understand what it means to suffer from mental illness, to support people who are suffering and to work as hard as I can to get the resources in place to make a difference.