Highest Suicide Rate by Profession - Farmers

[ksoze]

Shockingly, the highest suicide rate by profession is farmer - by a whopping 30%. Higher that returning war vets.



https://www.npr.org/2018/05/16/611727777/suicide-is-rising-among-american-farmers-as-they-struggle-to-keep-afloat

[Ilsa]

1. Government policy and weather, I guess, are

the two major variables that put them at greater risk.

A horrible thing to consider for another respected vocation.

[womanofthehills]

6. Pesticide exposure doesn't help

Farmers who work with pesticides, even without major mishaps, have a greater risk of neurological problems. That's according to a study of nearly 19,000 farmers, led by epidemiologist Freya Kamel of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

They looked at a host of symptoms, ranging from headache and fatigue to memory loss and motor problems. The more pesticides the farmers used in their lives, the greater the risk – even if they hadn't used them recently.
http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/farmers-pesticides/

[hack89]

2. It is a high stress, solitary life. nt

[democratisphere]

3. Farmers work their butts off and often are at mercy of weather and

wall street. Not a great position to be in.

[BaileyBill]

7. Actually...

Many of us worked our butts off for Clinton in totally unfriendly territory, but thanks for painting us all as Trump-loving troglodytes. Keep your sympathy, it won't help, anyway.

[cwydro]

10. Amazing, ain't it?

I also responded to that poster, but accidentally responded to the OP.

I’m so glad I don’t think like that.

[Phoenix61]

5. It's bad when you lose your job

If your a farmer, when you lose your job you lose your house too. Not to mention a way of life.

[cwydro]

8. My nearest neighbors out here in the country are black.

And they’re farmers.

They didn’t vote for rump; neither did I.

Generalizations are stupid. But it’s good to know you have no empathy for people who commit suicide.

Smh

Edit: this response was intended for sharonclark, not the OP

[oberliner]

11. This is not true

Physicians Experience Highest Suicide Rate of Any Profession

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/896257

[Tipperary]

12. I always heard it was dentists. In fact, my childhood dentist committed suicide.

Very sad.

[sl8]

13. I suspect the NPR article was using this CDC report:

Suicide Rates by Occupational Group — 17 States, 2012
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm

PDF: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/pdfs/mm6525.pdf

[Hortensis]

15. Could be, yes. And groups within these groups would

have their own rates.

Of course, suicide among farmers in other parts of the world being devastated by climate change, disappearing water, corporate ag exploitation, etc, is dreadfully skyrocketing. In the process of fighting to save their farms many, through borrowing to plant new crops, etc., dug themselves into holes they could never hope to recover from.

That isn't happening here in the same way to the same degree, but I would be very surprised if these same factors were not resulting in at least higher suicide rates among farmers in the U.S. Many are losing farms that their families have been dedicated to for generations, and now the Trump administration is happening to some like a political disease or plague of locusts on top of drought, following devastating winter kills, following killer summer temperatures, following crop destroying torrential rails, all on top of disappearing ground water.

[AwakeAtLast]

14. Just lost a farmer in my community Monday

He had some ground foreclosed on and was about to declare bankruptcy. His wife found him. I can't imagine the pain. For both of them.