It’s been a decade since Canadian farmers’ landmark mental health study quantified the undercurrent of anxiety and depression facing producers. So, over the past 10 years, has the situation improved? Become worse? That’s what new research aims to find out.
Prof. Andria Jones of the University of Guelph and her team are leading the study. This will be their third such survey; back in 2016, they surveyed 1,110 farmers across Canada, mostly from Ontario, to determine their mental wellbeing, then followed up in 2021.
The 2016 study revealed that stress, anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion and burnout were all higher among farmers than among other populations. Inside and outside of agriculture, the findings were jolting and downright alarming. The very people that Canadians count on for food production, one of the country’s most essential services, were struggling mightily.
The research results prompted a flurry of discussions designed to figure out what was going wrong and how to address it. The follow-up study that took place in 2021 had a similar number of participants.
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