Unique mental health service FarmTalk helping agricultural workers

A first-of-its-kind mental health support service has been launched for those working in the agricultural sector.

FarmTalk is a collaboration between Peterhead-based charity Men United and NFU Scotland. It aims to provide peer support for the mental wellbeing of the wider farming industry and their families.

Kevin Gilbert is one of the farmers behind the initiative and understands first-hand some of the challenges.
“You can’t take a day off, so you just get up and keep going,” he told STV News.

“For years and years, I was like that. Every year I would take anti-depressants. When the change of season happens in the spring and the daylight lengthens you think ‘I feel better now’.

“At the same time, when you’ve been combining busy harvesting you feel worthwhile and then you have all this backlog of office work which has built up and you go into an isolated office on your own and then start feeling down about things.”

The new service aims to listen and support, and says it will stand together with farmers to ensure they never face challenges alone. And now Kevin is encouraging others to speak out.

‘‘You speak to family members, and they can’t get their sibling or partner or husband or wife to contact anybody and can’t get them to go to the doctor,’’ he added.

‘‘We would hope that we could be that person that people could reach out and get them on the road to recovery.’’

Since opening the mental health charity Men United, Sandy Garvock has helped to support almost 1,000 people and says 38 lives have been saved.

Coming from a farming background, he knew more support was needed for the community.

“I felt that farmers needed somebody to speak to. Farming is a very isolated industry, when I was on the farm, I was doing 15 hours a day, seven days a week on a tractor on my own,” he said.

“Farmers need somebody who understands and listens to what they are saying, and that’s why we launched FarmTalk,” Sandy said.

Lorna Paterson, a regional manager for NFU Scotland, says more services like this are needed now more than ever before.

“Politics and obviously the weather plays a huge part in everybody’s life but particularly farming and for the farmers when things aren’t going well because they work on their own, they feel they have nobody to speak to,” Lorna said.

‘‘For the farming community because they are on their own and because they have that steadfast resilient image, they feel they have to live up to that.’’