SOME 33 men in the farming sector died by suicide last year, a rise of 24 per cent in such deaths compared to 2008, a conference on farm safety heard yesterday.
Teagasc researcher Maria Feeney said farm suicides last year accounted for 8 per cent of all male suicides. Rates in general were particularly high in rural areas. In Dublin city, the rate of male suicide was 12 per 100,000, while in Co Roscommon it was 25.5 per 100,000.
Ms Feeney, a Walsh Fellow who is working on her PhD at UCD’s school of sociology, was presenting to the conference her preliminary findings on a Teagasc study on suicide. The conference, which focused on the health of farmers and its role in farm fatalities, was held at Athy, Co Kildare.
Organised by the Health and Safety Authority, the event was overshadowed by the deaths of a Co Westmeath farmer and a west Cork farmer in farm accidents during the week.
Ms Feeney said international studies had shown similarly high rates of rural suicide in places such as Australia and Scotland.
But she said farmers in Ireland were over-represented in terms of occupation groups.
Three times as many farmers died by suicide than in areas such as accountancy, engineering and the legal profession.
Suicide, she said, had increased in modern times because of the rapid changes in modern society, where relationships were weaker within families and communities, and where certain groups, such as farmers in areas of heavy migration, had become marginalised.
She said that as part of a Teagasc initiative in 2007, 26 men aged 19-74 were interviewed after self-harming.
“While no single cause was attributed or was responsible for what had happened to them, individual issues or groups of issues emerged during the interviews,” she said. These included financial problems, social change and changes in agriculture and in their own employment status. Financial issues had arisen from farm debt linked to spending on farm improvements and to the loss of farm income.
“Some spoke of the loss of the traditional male role as a breadwinner, self-worth and self-respect because they could not provide the necessary money,” she said.
The men had spoken with nostalgia of the old times in farming when there was a communal effort to help each other, or meitheal. Now there were many one-man farms, which led to isolation.
There were now fewer farms and, with family members leaving, links were being broken and there was a sense of social isolation, making many feeling left behind.
Some of the agricultural changes had been beneficial but many farmers had complained about the speed of change. There were also fears surrounding farming regulations that they found difficult to understand, and worries about loss of earnings.
Dr Noel Richardson, director of the Centre for Men’s Health, Carlow, said men were generally happy with their state of health despite the fact they did not live as long as women.
He said it was imperative men be encouraged to have their health checked. Such checks could take place on occasions such as the ploughing championships and other rural gatherings, after which men could be referred to their doctors.