“Hello, farm stress line, how can I help you?”
For many farmers, those words can make the difference between life and death.
But in Alberta, help is not as readily available. At least, not yet.
Farming is one of Canada’s most stressful and dangerous jobs as farmers deal with 18-hour work days, financial worries, unpredictable weather and raising a family. Many farmers feel they must bear the load alone.
A group in Alberta’s Peace River region is trying to change that by developing a province-wide support line to help farmers deal with work-related stress. Alberta’s former farm stress line died from lack of funding in 1997. Manitoba’s disappeared in 1996.
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“I do not believe that we are reaching the farming community,” said Jacquie Aitken-Gaboury, who works for Providing Assistance Counselling and Education, an Alberta crisis line. “I think that farmers are often very independent and calling a multi-purpose crisis line is something they do not do. At the same time, they are alone with their stress.”
Aitken-Gaboury is one of 16 people working to organize the stress line. She feels if farmers have the option of talking with other farmers who understand the situations they face, they will use it.
“We would like to be more preventative, (directing) people to resources before they hit the wall,” said Aitken-Gaboury, who plans a stress line similar to the one in Saskatchewan.
The Saskatchewan line provides callers with two services: Information about their operation and counselling for personal and work-related problems. The line is operated by farmers trained to deal with various situations and is funded by the province.
“We average around 100 calls a month and those are strictly information and counselling calls where our callers are dealing with a particular issue … or need some information in order to address some aspect in their business,” said Ken Imhoff, manager of the Saskatchewan line.
Stressful time
Imhoff said his operators receive the most calls between the harvest and seeding seasons – when financial problems hit farmers hardest and personal problems surface that were often ignored because of the heavy summer workload.
“We have had callers with notions of suicide,” Imhoff said. “We are generally checking to determine if people are isolated, considerably depressed, and seem to be facing issues where they feel there is no way out.”
If a problem becomes too extreme, professional people are brought in to help.
The Saskatchewan line has received calls from Alberta farmers, but Imhoff said only a small number use the service.
The Alberta group is conducting focus sessions and assessing the need to see if a line is viable. They plan to seek funding if they find people are interested in such a program.
While the idea is in its infancy, training for line operators has started. No dates have been set for the service but Aitken-Gaboury would like to have operators taking calls on the PACE stress line as early as January.
Anyone interested in the stress line can contact Jacquie Aitken-Gaboury at 403-539-6692 or Jo-Anne Shaw at 403-835-2225.
