From Animal Care Lecturer Kirsty Jamieson:
May is mental health awareness month, and I wanted to raise awareness among the students at the Newtown St Boswells Campus about where to get help and that they are not alone.
I introduced a campaign called #areeweokay?, which is going on in the agricultural industry just now. We sold scones and cakes, raising £32 on campus. This was donated to One Step Borders Charity, a charity that currently helps our students with breakfast and lunch clubs. Gillian Ormiston is our campus worker who puts on these clubs to help our students. I then put on a competition to take a picture of an ewe and use the hashtag.
This encouraged students to get outside for a picture and raised awareness of mental health. The Farm Safety Foundation says research found that four out of five farmers under the age of 40 believed mental health was the biggest hidden problem facing farmers today.
Pictured here are our winners of the competition, who provided a variety of pictures with ewes in the field and on the farm. I contacted RSABI charity to let them know what we were doing at Borders College for our agricultural students. They asked if they could sponsor, and they provided their #keeptalking hats for our students and featured our story in their blog. I added feed buckets, socks, sweeties, crisps, and chocolates.
We are about to approach the busiest agricultural show season (Royal Highland Show, Great Yorkshire Show and The Royal Welsh). It is the period after this that we will see a dip in mental health as most people have had the chance to socialise, but then they are back to an isolated career with little to no contact for months, late working hours and physical and emotional strain. It is important to normalise talking amongst our students to know that they are not alone and that we need to keep talking.