A mental health expert says rural people are more resilient than they think.
“People bring more strength to their lives than not,” Nikki Gerrard told a national conference at the University of Saskatchewan Aug. 16.
Gerrard, a psychologist with the Saskatoon Health Region who has worked in the farm stress field for 15 years, said rural communities know so much about each family that it is hard to keep things private. That leads farmers to drive a new truck even when they can’t afford it, just to meet other peoples’ expectations.
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However, the local supports are fading away as elevators, hospitals and schools close.
Gerrard said one man in a rural stress group she held commented that he now has to deliver grain 50 or 100 kilometres away to a place where he doesn’t know people.
Another said that it seems like the only time people in his community come together is when they are angry about something.
“It’s anger that fuels the conversation,” she quoted him as saying. Coffee row chats also tend to be negative.
As an example of rural depopulation, Gerrard told of a hill in southern Saskatchewan where a person can stand and see 37 empty farmsteads.
Farm women have an especially difficult time, she said, because they often must raise the children, cook and clean house and hold an off-farm job.Yet they receive little respect in the wider society. Gerrard said an example of women’s lack of personal power is the handing down of the family farm from father to son.
“Will the parents sign over a quarter of land to (their daughter-in-law) so she has some financial security? No. I’ve known farm families even two, three years ago giving the woman a $1,000 allowance for food and kids’ care. That might have been a great amount in the 1960s.”
In outlining what mental health workers can do to help rural people, Gerrard said she asks farmers what has worked for them.
“First we need to learn about their lives, crops, machinery.”
Gerrard said mental health workers sometimes need to ignore time constraints and listen to farmers. Learn what they regard as supports in their community, whether it is friends, family, clergy or an institution, she said.
She has learned that a positive attitude helps alleviate stress. Providing farmers with information about economic, health and social resources will also help families cope.
“Knowledge is power. I don’t care whether it’s quilting. Just something to make them feel positive inside.”
She said for some it helps to take a time-out to gain perspective on their situation.
Farmers should also be strategic about using their power, said another speaker at the conference, Lewis Williams, who is director of the U of S Prairie Region Health Promotion Research Centre. In a comment after her speech, Williams said when farmers face government they risk being either co-opted or marginalized.
“Do you have enough critical mass to change the government’s view? If not, then you need to form partnerships to get policy changes.”
