Ben Cairns, PhD student, speaks to the News Letter from Balmoral about his research
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00:00Can you tell us what brought you to Balmoral?
00:02Yes, so I'm doing some research for my doctoral thesis and I'm doing that in farming and the farmer's mental health.
00:10It's for farmers and their families and it's to see what mental health factors are contributing most and least to their mental well-being.
00:18And what are you hoping for today in terms of what you'll gather?
00:23Well, I'm hoping long-term that we can identify the common factors among farmers, the things that are really impacting the mental health the most.
00:32So that as a clinician, I can identify the areas that my time would be best spent in intervening and to develop interventions for those things that are impacting farmers most.
00:44And what kind of reaction have you been getting so far?
00:47People have been very receptive. I think it's one of those things that, there's a sort of stigma where people don't want to talk about it.
00:52But by and large, everyone that I have asked has had something to say about it, some comments.
00:57Even if they don't want to do the task, you know, they've been very receptive to the idea and the need for mental health action within farming.
01:04So I couldn't be more at least.
01:06And what are you finding are some of the worst stress factors for farmers then?
01:11I think, as expected, there's quite a lot of economic issues are sort of the big one.
01:16There's a sort of sense of farmers really not having control, and that is something a lack of control is known to impact on people's mental health.
01:25But quite surprisingly, actually, is the number of farmers here listing, like, social issues.
01:30So challenges of working with their families, the risk of injury on the farm, and safety issues on the farm.