Farmers Are Taking ‘Tractor Selfies’ to Raise Awareness of Mental Health Issues

We're all pretty used to hearing about the struggles faced by those in the farming industry. If farmers aren't battling with supermarket pricing policy, they're facing competition from cheap foreign food imports or putting in exhausting working hours.

But far less is said about the impact such pressures can have on mental health. One farmer commits suicide every week in Britain and more than half of young farmers admit to fears about their profession's profitability, yet the stigma attached to talking about depression, anxiety, and even suicide—both within the farming community and wider society—remains.

A new social media movement is attempting to counter this by raising awareness of mental health issues in farming. Started by Alex Paske from Lincolnshire in memory of her friend, 29-year-old farmer Rob Chapman who took his own life last summer, "#tractorselfie4rob" sees Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram users post a photo of themselves with a tractor, accompanied by the hashtag and a donation to UK youth support charity Papyrus.

"The aim is to raise awareness of the stigma of mental health in the farming community and to make people realise that it is an illness and that people are not alone," Paske told Farmers Weekly. "I thought, 'How can we include Rob's favourite thing—a tractor—and make it go viral?'"

Over £3000 has been raised for Papyrus on the Just Giving page associated with the #tractorselfie4rob campaign and selfies have been posted from farmers in the US, Canada, and Australia as well as the UK. Those without tractors have improvised by posing with plastic toys or print-out photos.

Paske told BBC News that the campaign was about "how to deal with depression if you do suffer from it … and remove the stigma that seems to exist, particularly within the farming industry. There are lots of mental health issues within the industry for a variety of reasons, including isolation and spending long hours alone with your thoughts."

A report from the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institute found that such rural isolation, along with money worries, and exposure to pesticides that have been linked to depression, were contributing factors to mental health issues in farming communities.

Aside from such financial and health issues, the disinclination of many older farmers to open up about their anxieties also adds to the problem. Speaking to MUNCHIES last year, Clare Walden, whose farming father had made a suicide attempt said: "My dad's generation are never going to change their mindset—they have been conditioned over many years to keep things to themselves and not worry others. I don't want this generation or the next to feel like that should be normal."

Let's hope this generation's plastic tractors and gurning iPhone pics go some way in changing the mindset.