Mental health in farming: ‘Resilient people are the ones who ask for help’

“Wrong. Resilient people are the people who ask for help when they need it.”

Mr Glen said the youth of today was sometimes ‘a very misunderstood breed of people’ who have grown up in a world where the sharing of information and pressure from social media was reaching exponential rates.

Understanding

“We rely on a little important concept called resilience, in order to make sense, in order to manage, control and protect us from all of this,” he said.

“But it is very important for us to realise when we are understanding mental health that everybody’s stresses affect them differently.

“The important thing is, you do not have to be ready for it, you just have to know what to do when it happens.”

Gareth Davies of Tir Dewi, a helpline service stemmed from The Diocese of St. Davids, said he thought it was unlikely that rural charities were going to be able to solve the problems of the current generation of farmers – nor their future problems – but that support should be sifted through education of the younger generation.

He said: “I think the way of doing it is by working through Jonathan and his generation, working with Young Farmers Clubs to encourage and reintroduce a culture of help, of asking for help and being part of the solution for help.

“We need to get them to realise that they are their own solutions in their own clubs, if only they continue to help each other.”