From Silence to Support

Friday, September 25, 2026

Breaking ground on farmers’ mental health

By Sabrina Cataldo

Behind every field, every harvest, and every early morning is a person carrying more than most people ever see. One in four Canadians will experience a mental health challenge in their lifetime. And for farmers and ranchers, the risks are higher. Farming compounds the problem: the ‘tough-it-out’ culture, combined with lack of rural services, can end in tragedy. Farmers are two-to-five times more likely to die by suicide than the Canadian average.

“Those are hard numbers. And I don’t see those as numbers. That’s my family. Those stats are us,” says Lesley Kelly, co-founder of The Do More Agriculture Foundation, a nonprofit that champions mental health in agriculture across Canada.

Kelly farms 6,500 acres of canola, lentils and wheat on a farm near Watrous, Sask., with her husband, Matt, their two children, and her brother and his family. She follows in her father’s footsteps, who was also a grain farmer.

Growing up, Kelly could sense the effects the stress of farm life had on her family. “We didn’t talk a lot about our mental health growing up. But then my dad was the catalyst in changing that culture, because he said, ‘I don’t want you guys to face those stresses alone. You guys have each other.’ So, we created the mentality that it was okay to talk about mental health,” she says.

“What changed on our farm was we had to talk about it. Because we were living in silence and my dad saw that silence start to erode the family.”

Kelly didn’t have plans to become an advocate for mental health until she saw those close to her suffer in silence. Her husband lives with anxiety, a condition amplified by stressors on the farm. He describes it like wearing a backpack. “Everything that goes wrong, every negative moment during that high anxiety time just keeps filling that backpack up. And it just keeps getting heavier and heavier, and you have no way to get rid of it,” Matt says.

“And talking to somebody — it’s almost like a warm blanket that goes around you. Because it gives you an answer. It gives you some clarification. It allows you to sit and figure it out.

“And it’s only as bad as we make it, right? If we can get out of our head for a little while and reset, it just makes things simpler.”

Lesley has also struggled with her own mental health. “I didn’t know much about mental health until I experienced a mental illness firsthand. After talking to others and reading, I found out that there are a lot of misunderstandings, misconceptions and stigma about mental health, which creates that silence,” she says.

“I want to change how we view mental health as a weakness. I now view mental health just as important as my physical health. I’m a mental health advocate because we can’t afford to be silent anymore, and breaking that silence and having a voice can make a positive difference in others’ lives, especially when they need it the most.”

In 2018, Kelly and a few others from Saskatchewan realized there was a need to help farmers, and The Do More Agriculture Foundation was born. “We created the first national organization in Canada — and the first one in the world — dedicated solely to farmer mental health.

“There wasn’t anything out there. There were campaigns that helped or pockets of organizations doing something, but for a national voice or champion, there was definitely a gap,” Kelly says.

Mental health services and supports are hard to access in rural and remote locations. Do More aims to bridge the gap — helping farmers, farm families and those across the Canadian agriculture industry connect with the support, education and resources they need to thrive. The organization focuses on mental health in agriculture through awareness, community building and resources. These include a half-day mental health workshop specifically tailored to agriculture and a program designed to teach mental health professionals about the unique stressors in agriculture. As well, through their Community Fund for Mental Health Education, Do More also helps make mental health programming more accessible by providing agricultural communities with low- to no-cost training and education.

Trevor Hardy, branch manager of Brandt Agriculture in Watrous, has watched the impact the Kellys’ work has had on the farming community. “It’s tough topics that they deal with. They make it easy for people to have those hard conversations in business conversations, farming conversations, life conversations. And it needs to be done. You can’t bottle it up. You can’t shove it down. You have to have those conversations. I think it makes us stronger,” he says.

“There’s a lot of support in the ag community. And it’s thanks to Matt and Lesley for bringing that support to our community.”

Much of their success can be summed up in a quote from Farm Management Canada’s Healthy Minds, Healthy Farms Report: “Farmers are more likely to participate in support programs offered by providers familiar with agriculture and that cater to the unique needs of farmers.”

Kelly remembers a specific panel on mental health that Do More held in a rural community. The room was full of farmers, but when the session ended, there were no questions. Just dead silence. Then one farmer, who was about 80 years old, went up to the mic. Kelly recalls, “He lifted up his fingers, and he said, ‘I don’t have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of people I’ve lost to suicide.’ And then he said, ‘It’s about damn time we start talking about it.’ And then you could just feel the sense of tension in the room was released.” After that, people started lining up at the mic to agree or even share their own stories.

“We realized it just takes someone to just crack the door open and know that it’s real, and it’s relatable, and it’s part of farming. It’s about just holding space or creating spaces for farmers, so they can feel seen and supported, and they can be strong yet struggle, and that’s okay.”

Kelly concludes, “If we allow people the opportunity and the space and the freedom and less shame and more acceptance and more openness and vulnerability, we can essentially save lives.” BF