Minding mental health is an ever increasing challenge for rural communities, and especially farmers. It’s a crisis exacerbated by precarious and political uncertainty, and tied up with questions of generational renewal on farms. To learn more about the situation on the ground, the services available, and what rural communities can do, Hannes Lorenzen spoke to Regina Eichinger-Schönberger, a health counsellor in Germany who specialises in suicide prevention in the green sector.
Hannes Lorenzen: Why is mental health counselling important in rural areas and in the green economy?
Regina Eichinger-Schönberger: The rural idyll is a beautiful but largely bygone dream. Rural areas are changing rapidly and requiring people to adapt quickly to these changes. When personal crises arise, those affected are often overwhelmed. And there are significant gaps in the provision of counselling and support. As a social insurance provider for people working in agriculture, forestry and horticulture, we offer our members a network for crisis counselling. But there are also other professions, such as craftspersons and bakers, and many people who live in the countryside and work in the city. They also need support when things don’t go as planned. As a social insurance provider, there is a lot we can do. But more attention and support is needed, especially in rural areas, so that people in need are not left alone.
HL: What are the main problems people come to you with, and what services can you offer them?
RES: Mental health crises among farmers are mainly triggered by a particularly high workload, but also by increasing economic and political uncertainties. As entrepreneurs, they often have to cope with many challenges at once on their own. This also places a heavy burden on their families. Often, the help of parents is necessary. And when the older generation is suddenly no longer able to do the extra work that was planned as part of modernisation, things get tight. Financial and personnel bottlenecks can quickly grow into a threat to livelihoods. And agricultural assistance is hard to find.
HL: Is the generational change also a reason for the crisis?
RES: Yes, farm succession often remains unresolved for a long time. If the children decide against it, the question ultimately arises: what’s all the stress for? Young people are often difficult to enthuse about the profession and farm succession. They do an apprenticeship and see the career opportunities of their friends with more free time and holidays. Choosing a career for life, such as in agriculture, is often associated with high risks and uncertainties, and is therefore not particularly attractive. This can be very stressful for the parent generation because they do not see their life’s work and hopes reflected in their children.
HL: How can you help?
RES: We try to forward the enquiries we receive as quickly as possible to the best specialist and psychological counselling centre, for example to socio-economic support in financial distress; or to mediators if the family is no longer talking to each other; or to psychologists if the problems have already grown beyond their control and anxiety and depression make rational action impossible. Our crisis hotline operates 24 hours a day, every day, offering help for all kinds of mental health crises. Sometimes, even in the middle of the night or at Christmas, you need someone to listen and offer advice.
HL: What differences do you notice in your counselling work when you are approached by women, men, young people or older people?
RES: Our service is a point of contact for anyone who needs and seeks help. Women usually seek help in crises earlier than men – often also for their husbands and families. There is a provocative saying: women seek help, men die. But there are also men who successfully address mental health issues on social media. “Take care of yourselves too!” says Christoph Rothaupt, a farmer in the Rhön region, who has actively removed the taboo surrounding burnout and depression. Whether young or old, it is important that crises are not seen as failure or incompetence, but as an opportunity to reinvent oneself. That is what we are working on. For young adults, there are also special services offered through the National Suicide Prevention Programme NASPRO, where the threshold for seeking help is low because the language is right.
HL: But in the countryside, people know each other and live less anonymously. Isn’t life in village communities also a source of support in personal crises?
RES: You might think so. But it’s not that simple. As long as mental health crises are perceived as a personal weakness or failure, both by those affected and by those around them, the distress is stigmatised. And individualisation is just as noticeable in rural areas as it is in cities. What clubs and voluntary work used to reliably provide support for is now in decline. Rural women still seem to be successfully resisting this trend. Village solidarity and mutual support often only reappear when everyone is affected at the same time, in the event of floods, fires, accidents and the like. Such events bring cohesion back to the surface in collectively experienced crises. But that’s what’s needed.
HL: Suicides are said to have declined overall in the last ten years. Do you think this is true, and what might be the reason for it?
RES: Unfortunately, the figures for recent years have risen significantly again, and for the first time we have more than ten thousand people in Germany who have died by suicide. The exact reasons for this need to be investigated. It is conceivable that the overall psychological strain caused by the consequences of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the generally uncertain situation has increased. Loneliness and isolation are also becoming increasingly significant issues in rural areas, placing a considerable strain on many people. There is therefore no reason to sit back and relax. Our Berlin Declaration rightly states that there is no reliable data on suicide rates in the green sector in Germany, which is why research into suicide prevention remains important.
HL: In many European countries, crisis support and suicide prevention services are provided almost exclusively by volunteers. Do you consider this form of support to be sufficient, or are more professional and state-funded measures also necessary?
RES: I think both forms of counselling and support are important, the professional and the community-based. The professional form should act as an interdisciplinary network to help people who need help get the right counselling as quickly as possible and to raise social awareness. We must transform crises, which are mostly perceived as personal, from the taboo zone of failure into a discourse on crisis management. Voluntary and community-based services are perhaps even more important than professional ones in this regard. After all, crises do not only begin when the situation has already become critical. Personal crises arise at work, in the family, through the loss of loved ones, through conflicts with neighbours, through accidents, floods. The worst thing is to be alone with it. When the crisis comes from outside, in the case of disasters for example, the sense of community in every village still kicks in. But when it becomes private, it is not so certain that help will come on its own. We humans are social creatures. But sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we lose touch with those close to us. We need to learn to look more closely when others are struggling. Not just as professional helpers, of whom there are too few, but as neighbours and friends.
In Germany, the Social Insurance for Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture (SVLFG) is the umbrella organisation for the Agricultural Professional Association, Pension Fund, Health Insurance Fund and Long-Term Care Insurance Fund. It provides comprehensive services from a single source. Prevention work for its members is thus carried out by various bodies. In 2023 SVLFG published the Berlin Declaration: Mental health in the green sector – who cares?
Regina Eichinger-Schönberger has been working for SVLFG since 2019, where she is responsible for health counselling and prevention services for insured persons in life crises. Prior to this position, she worked as a volunteer crisis intervention worker for emergency services and is a lecturer at the University of Regensburg. In the German National Suicide Prevention Programme (NaSPRO), she heads the working group on suicide prevention in the green sector.
Hannes Lorenzen conducted this interview with Regina Eichinger-Schönberger on behalf of the Life Foundation and ARC2020 as part of a European study on depression and mental health in rural areas.
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