Farmscape for August 23, 2018

A Northeastern Saskatchewan farmer and co-founder of the Do More Agriculture Foundation is encouraging communities to consider making available mental first health first aid training.
The Do More Agriculture Foundation, created just over one year ago to champion the cause for the mental wellbeing of Canadian farmers, is working to increase the availability of mental health first aid training in rural communities.
Kim Keller, a co-founder of the foundation, says farmers experience different stresses throughout the year.

Clip-Kim Keller-Do More Agriculture Foundation:
We are seeing a changing rural landscape where we don't have the same small communities that we had before so we may not see people getting together for a game of slow-pitch every Friday or meeting up at the rink every weekend or even getting together at a community church every Sunday.
You may not see that any more so people don't have that same aspect of social health in their life and we're actually having to figure out a different way in order to have that social aspect of our life.
I know a lot of people are turning to different social media platforms where you can connect with people but you don't have to be in the same physical proximity as they are.
There aren't very many supports that are agriculture specific and we're working with different researchers to uncover what some of those gaps might be.
Currently there are crisis lines for each province and we do see that there are regional supports in place as well.
The best place to go if you are looking for your regional support is either to your local health authority or talk to your family doctor.
If you are looking for the provincial crisis line or different national supports that are available, I'd recommend that you check out our resources page on our web site.

Keller encourages communities to consider applying for community funding for mental health first aid training once it becomes available.
The Do More Agriculture Foundation web site can be accessed at domore.ag.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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