Galway farmer Shay Concannon has been, as he puts it, "out on the farm" since he was 4 years old because there's always something to do on a farm. Oliver Callan asked him what he thought about the mental health of Irish farmers today. The question comes in the wake of a DCU study that found that farmers face significant mental health issues compared to the general population. Shay’s response:
"I don’t think it’s great at the moment. There are farmers out there and they’re not talking. And I know there are farmers out there who are under pressure, mentally and physically and probably financially as well and they won’t talk. And I’m worried about them because something’s going to happen to them."
Shay has had his own mental health challenges beginning, he told Oliver, back in 2012:
"I just felt wrong, you know, I knew there was something wrong. I just wasn’t myself and I was finding it hard to do work, you know, everything was no good, so it was, to get up in the mornings, to get out and do work."
Having got married in 2009, Shay’s wife Mona noticed that everything wasn’t right with him and she told him that he needed to get help:
"She said, 'There’s something wrong with you,’ she said, ‘you need to go to the doctor.’ So, I went to the doctor and straight away they said, 'Depression’ and, ‘Do you want to get help?’ And I said, ‘I definitely do.’"
At this stage, Shay had been struggling for a number of years. Oliver asked him if he remembered the conversations he used to have with himself. He certainly did:
"I had myself convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel and that, you know, that my days were over. And I did go to the stage that I had in my head the decision made that I was ending my life. One evening I was gone bringing the cows in and I was in the field and I just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ And I decided to make a phone call to my sister to say goodbye and she just talked me down."
Shay’s sister and his wife convinced him to look for help and he agreed to talk to his doctor, who referred him on to psychiatric services where, he says, he did a lot of talking:
"I spent days going into the psych ward in Galway and I basically just talked and talked and talked and it gave me, basically, ways to cope with it and I’m out the other side of it now."
Talking is key, Shay says. It’s the only way that a person is going to get through what they’re experiencing. But too many farmers don’t want to talk – and he should know, he was the same:
"People, especially farmers, they don’t want to talk about it. And I didn’t want to talk about it for a long time. But, you know, you need to talk. Talking is the only way you’re going to get help and get the help you need and, you know, come out the other side of it. It doesn’t have to be someone you know, you can talk to a complete stranger if it makes you feel better, but talk to someone."
You can hear Oliver’s full conversation with Shay by clicking above.
If you’ve been affected by any issues raised in this article, you can find resources that may be able to help here.