Eleven years ago, things were not going well on many farms. Crops weren’t good, prices were dropping. Agriculture was going into crisis.
The big difference between 1998 and 1987 is the lack of articles in the media, farm and otherwise, about stress on the farm. There was a time, 10 or 11 years ago, when you could hardly pick up a farm or newspaper without the words “farm stress” jumping out at you.
What’s happened to stress, I wondered, as I dialed rural stress expert Dr. Nikki Gerrard in Saskatoon.
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She told me that stress is still very much with us, but she thinks that, as some are suffering from Diana fatigue, we are suffering from rural stress fatigue. Stress has “gone underground,” she told me.
Rural people have been “beaten down a lot,” she said. “Many feel there is no hope, so why raise the issue, who can help, what can change when nothing improved the last time?”
It has long been my feeling that the stress of today is more insidious than that we experienced in the ’80s and early ’90s. Then, the stress was mainly financial and you could often do something to take control of your life even though in too many cases that taking control involved leaving the farm.
Today, coupled with the financial stress which again we might be able to control in some fashion, we also have the stresses of rural living brought about by purely external factors – things being done to us and to our communities – elevators, schools and hospitals and rail lines closing, longer distances for help and to deliver our products, poorer roads, children leaving home to be educated and not coming back because there is nothing to come back for.
Gerrard agreed with that assessment, saying that much control has been removed from individuals and “the scope for positive action is much more restricted.”
Along with this, she said, many people are afraid to speak up about the situation, fearing that they will be blamed, told that they are not smart, or are poor managers who should have been weeded out the first time around.
Blaming the victim is easy.
What we all in rural areas have to remember is that in one sense or another we have all been victims of rapid change, much of which has been out of our control, and that if we are feeling bad about the situation we are probably not alone and it is not our fault.
