EDMONTON – Canadian farmers have been less likely to commit suicide than the general population, says a medical researcher.
That good news was contained in one of the largest studies of the national farm population and reported at the annual Canadian Farm Safety and Rural Health conference Nov. 4-6.
Queen’s University professor Dr. William Pickett said his study followed the 325,000 men identified as farmers in the 1971 census. After 17 years the deaths in that group were sorted by cause. There were 1,457 suicides, which was 0.4 percent of the group.
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Nine of the 10 provinces showed lower rates than the national average from 1971-1987. Quebec was higher, which Pickett could not explain.
Removing Quebec from the Canadian total shows a farmer suicide rate of 24 per 100,000 compared to the general population’s 26.5 per 100,000, said Pickett.
The suicide rate did not seem affected by farm income squeezes, although Pickett said the study did not follow those who may have left farming during that time. Nor did it track suicide attempts.
He said close-knit rural communities, where everyone is visible, may explain why suicide is relatively rare.
Pickett said there are few studies of farmer suicide in Canada. Ontario is reviewing coroner’s cases and has seen some patterns. Common trigger factors include personal conflict or family breakup, alcohol impairment, loneliness, financial crisis, acute or chronic illness and access to a means to kill oneself.
In Ontario, men were most likely to commit suicide, and were most likely to do it by hanging or shooting themselves.
“These were not cries for help, but deliberate actions beyond recovery,” Pickett said.
Guns are part of the suicide issue, said Ken Imhoff, manager of the Saskatchewan Farm Stress Line.
“Every prairie farm house has three guns – a .22, a shotgun and a larger bore rifle.”
But he said guns do not drive farmers to suicide. There are also finances, men’s reluctance to share private pain and a last-straw incident such as a machinery breakdown.
“I often wonder about some farm accidents – if they are really a suicide,” Imhoff said.
“Anger can lead to a fatality, putting oneself in harm’s way.”
Only half of suicides are reported as such, said Paul Hasselback, medical health officer for the Chinook Region in southwestern Alberta.
He told delegates to the safety conference that females are three times as likely to attempt suicide, but males are three times as likely to succeed.
During an average year in southern Alberta, he said there are 20 suicides, 40 deaths from traffic accidents and three or four agricultural fatalities.
Factors that make people less inclined to kill themselves are available mental health care, strong connections to friends, restricted access to lethal weapons and cultural or religious beliefs that condemn suicide.
Hasselback said Alberta has worked hard in the past 15 years on suicide prevention, training 25,000 people to detect signs in vulnerable people and spending $1 million a year. It is regarded as a model for other governments. Yet, he said, Alberta’s suicide rate is about the same as in other provinces that do little.
Hasselback said part of that contradiction can be explained by the lack of research that could test the most effective prevention practices. It could also be that the program does not focus on the people most susceptible to suicide – aboriginals and men with mental illness.
