National Centre For Farmer Health launch farmer mental health webinar

In response to this, the National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH) has released a webinar for service providers to "help get your clients out of the mud".

NCFH flood recovery response project officer Sally Cunningham said although last year's floods might seem like a long time ago, it was only now that the stress and fatigue of it all would start to take a hold on farmers, farm families and farm workers.

"Service providers and trusted agricultural advisors play a really important role in assisting farmers through the flood recovery journey," Ms Cunningham said.

"This webinar helped them to recognise and respond to farmer stress and then reflect on how to protect themselves from risks to their own mental health."

Presented by NCFH research assistant Kelly Barnes, the webinar goes through the four ways to support farmers - recognise, respond, refer and reflect.

In discussing the first step - recognise - Ms Barnes said it was an important step to notice behavioural changes that may allude that a farmer was struggling and challenges were beginning to pile up.

"Recognising that heightened stress can be tricky," she said.

"It's really looking at that change in normal behaviour.

"Rural males especially do tend to start drinking more, so that's something just to keep in mind, or an emotional outburst, so someone that's perhaps normally quite calm."

The second topic, respond, covers how best to react to that behaviour change once you've identified it.

"We're not expecting you to be a psychologist to provide counselling, that's definitely not your role, but you can ensure they're safe," she said.

"If you're going out on a farm you might just have a quick scout around and check that they are safe in their environment."

Ms Barnes suggested promoting calmness, ensuring their basic needs were met, promoting group and self-efficacy, connectedness and instilling hope in the farmer.

"Listen twice as much as you talk," she said.

Using active listening, she said, engage in conversation with the farmer, ensure to ask about their needs, if they needed help and ask what their concerns were, while validating their stress responses.

"Quite often we want to respond straight away and we want to problem solve, but in actual fact that person just really needs us to listen to start with," she said.

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For those providing services or products to farmers, Ms Barnes said it was important to provide options, such as the most effective solution, a less-effective but more budget-friendly option and a third low-cost option so they don't feel trapped.

She said encourage farmers to go back to their usual support networks and passions, such as returning to playing football, joining a gardening group or attending a CFA meeting to connect in the community.

She said the first point of call for struggling farmers would be support organisations like Rural Aid, Rural Financial Counselling Service and general well-being supports like Lifeline, Beyond Blue and MensLine.

With all of this in mind, Ms Barnes said during a flying emergency the first thing people were asked to do was apply their own oxygen mask before helping others, and supporting a farmer was no different.

"We're often in the trenches going through the challenging seasons with our clients and we're not really always looking at the effect that that's having on us as well," she said.

"It's really useful to know when to escalate any concerns so when it does get to the point that it's beyond your capabilities... that might be escalating that to a manager or passing and referring them on to a counsellor.

"So just being really clear on where your boundaries are."

She said resources on the NCFH website were there to assist individuals in recognising their own stressors and triggers too.

She said there were worksheets to assist in responding to certain emotions and how to reset and get back to doing things that were enjoyable.

Available also is a list of resources to assist when someone might need help, whether that be professional help, emotional help or even a bank manager when finances may become tight.

"Keep in mind this doesn't come naturally to people," Ms Barnes said.

"You're not going to pick it up all at once.

"It's not gonna all of a sudden fix everything, but it's just the more you go through it and the more you write these things down and refer back to them the easier you'll find it."

The webinar is available to view here.