Researchers to shed light on high Prairie suicide rates

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This article was published 23/02/2019 (2658 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Suicide rates on the Prairies are among the highest in Canada, and a team of researchers from Brandon University and the University of Manitoba hopes to better understand why.

“We do know that, you know, farming is a stressful job,” project lead Rachel Herron said.

“There had been some research on farmers’ mental health, but a lot of it’s older.”

She noted demographics on the Prairies are also changing.

“We have a smaller number of farmers than in the past. We have a growing Indigenous population; we have a growing newcomer population,” Herron said in an interview Friday.

“So those kinds of trends aren’t necessarily reflected in our understanding of rural mental health,” she said. “Rural men are a different group than they have been in the past.”

Suicide rates are higher among men than women.

Initiatives such as the Bell Let’s Talk campaign and Movember have helped bring mental health and wellness into the public eye, Herron said in a news release from the university, “but we also need to understand the challenges and stress men face in the region to provide better support to them and their families. We need to know what is getting in the way of their health.”

Bell Let’s Talk promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns. The Movember Foundation is a charity that focuses on men’s health, including testicular cancer, prostate cancer, mental health and suicide prevention.

The two-year case study is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Herron, who is the Canada Research Chair in Rural and Remote Mental Health and a member of BU’s geography department, is joined on the research team by Brandon University’s Jonathan Allan (gender and women’s studies) and Candice Waddell (department of psychiatric nursing) and Kerstin Roger (department of community health science at the University of Manitoba).

The research team is looking for men across the Westman region to participate in small group discussions or share their story one-on-one.

Anyone interested in participating in the project can contact Herron at 204-727-9771 or at herronr@brandonu.ca.

The team hopes the information collected will help to improve policy and programs in the area.

Herron said they have had good response from men wanting to take part in the study.

Across Canada, men report lower levels of stress and depression, yet they have much higher rates of suicide than women. In general, men are less likely to talk about, and seek support for, their mental-health needs than women, particularly in rural Canada.

Every day in Canada, an average of 10 people will end their lives by suicide, while up to 200 others will attempt it, the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention says on its website.

The latest research shows there were 3,926 suicides in 2016 across Canada. In 2015, more than 3,396,000 Canadians aged 12 and over had suicidal thoughts.

Suicide is one of the ninth-leading cause of death among Canadians, with rates increasing over the past 60 years.

The association notes males are three times more likely to die by suicide than females.

However, women are three times more likely to attempt to end their lives, the association notes. As well, women are hospitalized 1.5 times more often than men for suicide related behaviours. This discrepancy may be due to the fact females tend to use less immediately lethal methods to attempt suicide.

A Conference Board of Canada report showed Alberta (at 13.1), Saskatchewan (13) and Manitoba (12.7) behind only Quebec (13.2) and New Brunswick (13.8) among the provinces for highest number of suicides per 100,000 population from 2010 to 2012.

Nunavut had the highest suicide rates in Canada, at 65.5 per 100,000.

— Brandon Sun