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The importance of good mental health is increasingly being recognised across agriculture. Use this page to connect to useful initiatives and resources.

Mental health is an important issue in the agricultural industry. Farmers and other agricultural workers often work long hours in challenging and isolated environments, which can put a strain on their mental health. In addition, the agricultural industry is subject to many stresses and pressures, such as fluctuating commodity prices and unpredictable weather conditions, which can also contribute to poor mental health. As a result, it is important for farmers and other agricultural workers to prioritize their mental health and to seek support when needed. This can help to prevent mental health problems and to improve the overall well-being of the agricultural community.

This summary was written by OpenAI's ChatGPT - If you can improve it then please Join the page and Edit.

If you need support there are organisations who can help, including Farm Community Network (FCN) and YANA.

A number of relevant academic papers on mental health in farming have recently been published, including "Landscapes of Support for farming mental health".

Related Organisations

Content below is from across the PEP community and is not necessarily endorsed by Stewards or by PEP

Connected Content

Education & Skills

Building the right skills for the agricultural industry has been recognised as crucial to its future success.

Safety

With the high number of vehicles and machinery and potential for falling from heights, we all understand that farming is a hazardous occupation. It represents just under 2% of the workforce in Great Britain but accounts for around 19% of the reported fatal injuries each year. 

The Farming Community Network (FCN)

A voluntary organisation & charity that supports farmers and families within the farming community.  Whether the issue is personal or business-related, FCN is here for you. We run a confidential, national helpline and e-helpline which is open every day of the year from 7am to 11pm and our volunteers provide free, confidential support to anyone who seeks help. Over 6,000 people a year benefit from FCN’s support and we can help with a variety of issues.

Networks

FarmPEP aims to connect the many networks, communities and groups across Agriculture. Add your network as a Group and connect to the 'Networks' Topic to have your network show up below. 

Policy

Policy plays a critical role in shaping the agriculture industry in the UK and Europe. Government policies can have a major impact on the way that farmers operate, the crops they grow, and the prices they receive for their products. Policy has a major effect on how land is managed and environmental outcomes.

Landscapes of support for farming mental health: Adaptability in the face of crisis

Academic paper in Sociologica Ruralis - Journal of the European Society of Rural Sociology in December 2022, by Faye Shortland, Jilly Hall, Paul Hurley, Ruth Little, Caroline Nye, Matt Lobley and David Christian Rose.

The power of a lunchtime walk

The lunchtime stroll I sit at my desk all day, like so many other people. Whether I am

Webinar for special issue of Sociologia Ruralis on farmer wellbeing

Hear from up to 7 authors of articles from Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA. Part of #MindYourHead week organised by The Farm Safety Foundation, Stephanie Berkeley.  

YANA - Rural mental health support

You Are Not Alone. Help for those involved in farming and other rural businesses affected by stress and depression

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Simple meta tags.

The text to display in the title bar of a visitor's web browser when they view this page. This meta tag may also be used as the title of the page when a visitor bookmarks or favorites this page, or as the page title in a search engine result. It is common to append '[site:name]' to the end of this, so the site's name is automatically added. It is recommended that the title is no greater than 55 - 65 characters long, including spaces.
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Control when the browser's internal cache of the current page should expire. The date must to be an RFC-1123-compliant date string that is represented in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), e.g. 'Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:12:56 GMT'. Set to '0' to stop the page being cached entirely.
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The secure URL (HTTPS) of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly. Any URLs which start with "http://" will be converted to "https://".
The type of image referenced above. Should be either 'image/gif' for a GIF image, 'image/jpeg' for a JPG/JPEG image, or 'image/png' for a PNG image. Note: there should be one value for each image, and having more than there are images may cause problems.
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Twitter Cards

A set of meta tags specially for controlling the summaries displayed when content is shared on Twitter.

Notes:
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  • Product Card requires the 'description' field, the 'image' field, the 'Label 1' field, the 'Data 1' field, the 'Label 2' field and the 'Data 2' field.
A description that concisely summarizes the content of the page, as appropriate for presentation within a Tweet. Do not re-use the title text as the description, or use this field to describe the general services provided by the website. The string will be truncated, by Twitter, at the word to 200 characters.
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The MIME type for the media contained in the stream URL, as defined by RFC 4337.