New insight into the mental health toll of Victoria’s drought

A young farmer in Victoria’s southwest is on a personal crusade to highlight the mental health crisis sparked by the drought. Jason Smith says the general community needs to hear the confronting truth, and hopes by speaking openly about his own battle, he can save lives.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
In two thoy and seventeen, Jason Smith was Australia's Young
Farmer of the Year, an industry shining star, but now
a confronting admission.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I didn't trust myself, so I gave the keys to
my gun safe to my neighbor. But I just didn't
want that temptation. It's been really low, it's been really hard.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Like so many farmers, after two years of drought, he
can't afford workers under stress, his relationship broke down. He
works eighteen hours a day on four hundred hectares alone.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
There's a one point there where I couldn't find any
fodder for the cows, and I was worried that they
were going to starve, and there's all sorts of feelings
of being a fire and I thought, I thought, I
thought maybe it would be better if I wasn't here,

(01:11):
so and I didn't know. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Counseling and treatment saved him. His stress is help ease
out there.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
I suppose that's why I wanted to talk about it,
because it's really hard, and there's a lot of people
that won't talk about it, and we just need to
be there for each other, and we need the general
community to know how hard we're doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Recent rain is welcome, but it's too cold for grass
to grow into feed now as bills mount. Normally, Jason
grows his own feed here, but over the past four
months alone, he's spent three hundred and twenty five thousand
dollars buying hay interstate. Usually it costs around three hundred

(02:00):
fifty dollars a ton, but recently that's doubled.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
When you go to bed at night and you can
hear animals screaming because they're not fully fed, it gives
you nightmares.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, unless there's drastic change, Jason warns of a stark
reality for our food future.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
My family's been dairy farming for one hundred and seventy years,
but I'm not going to do it forever. It's too hard.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Nick McCallum, seven News and if you or someone you
know needs help, call Lifeline on one three double one
one four