This is Damon's story

Since joining Samaritans as a listening volunteer four years ago, Damon is a dedicated part of his branch's Outreach team. Very sadly, he has experience of being bereaved by suicide – his cousin, who worked on a farm.

“I lost my cousin, before I joined Samaritans, it was one of the reasons I joined. He ended up taking his own life, it’s very easy to fall through the cracks of life and the support wasn’t there for him. It was one of those things that pushed me on to try and find the tools I needed to notice and be there for such people.

“Within farming itself, it’s a very isolated job, you have to be self-reliant to be doing it. You haven’t got other people pushing you. So, they are resilient, or mainly resilient, and very much self-reliant. In trying to speak to these people, it’s trying to get through and saying ‘we know you’re self-reliant, but at the same time, it’s going to come to the point where you do need to talk to someone, otherwise you might not be there the next day’.

“If someone had the tools to talk to [my cousin], or the nous to have noticed, they might have been able to do something, or address the issues. He’d fallen through the cracks of social services and other such people, and he got tied up in his own little world.

“Again, the isolation of being on a farm, you’re not seeing people all the time, you don’t have that opportunity to chat. With farmers, they might go to market once a week, if they’re open, you wouldn’t find them going ‘y’know, I’m finding it really tough at the moment’, you’d really have to talk to them for a couple of days before you got there.”

“I started off in recruitment, having become a volunteer. I’m a trustee and have been for three years, and I’m also a mentor, I’ve just recently completed my training for trainers. I do an awful lot of outreach. I’m passionate about supporting the green shoots in our social media/digital team to hopefully reach out further through those mediums.

"Our outreach is a fantastic department, we do hospitals, schools, universities, colleges, trade unions, nursing schools – we don’t need the door to even be half open before we get our foot in. We speak to all faiths, visit agricultural shows, literally anywhere, we’ll put our banner up and say ‘come talk to us’.

“[The pandemic] has shown our resilience, we’ve twisted and turned to adapt, finding new ways to do things. We used the time to build relationships with organisations like the NFU and the Young Farmers.

“It’s very, very personal to me, I grew up in a farming community in a rural area, so I know the difficulties they have. People in the farming community will always try and do more, putting more pressure onto their shoulders and never complain or discuss it. So, with us trying to get in there, and we’re starting to get into some of the farming mags now, I’m hoping that’s going to have a really positive influence.”