No, but both have to do with Earth’s relationship to the sun.
As we’ve established, during an equinox, the sun crosses the equator, making that date’s stretches of day and night about the same length of time. A solstice, on the other hand, is a period in which the sun is at its farthest point from the equator.
Like the equinoxes, there are two solstices a year.
During the summer solstice, the North Pole tilts to a point closest to the sun, making it the longest day of the year. The opposite happens during the winter solstice: the South Pole is tilted closest to the sun, making the day of that solstice the shortest, darkest day of the year (again, we’re specifically referring to the Northern Hemisphere here). The beginnings of winter, spring, summer, and fall are ushered in by four events: The winter solstice, the vernal equinox, the summer solstice, and the autumnal equinox, respectively.
October being Breast Cancer Month:
Breast cancer patients know what the stresses of having breast cancer can do to their stress levels. As with Rural farmers — know all to well the harvest moon brings days getting shorter after your body is use to longer days and an added work load to their body,
Katie Lyons grew up on an Illinois farm and experienced first-hand how depression can change farm families. “When I was younger, he was always out playing with us in the yard having fun,” Lyons says of her father, David Hulsizer. “We used to go swimming and do a lot of different activities. I try to hold those memories close because that’s all I have left.” In 2013, the unthinkable changed their family forever when Lyons’ father died by suicide at 51. She says her dad battled depression and anxiety for years, but when anyone would try to address it, he shut down.
“There’s a huge stigma around mental health. We think it’s a weakness or something is wrong with us, but [mental illness] is a true medical condition,” Lyons says. ”Sometimes it’s hard to admit we need help. There are resources out there. I don’t want this to happen to another farm family.” Mental Stress Causes Physical Pain: A baseball flies to the back of the batting cage as Indiana farmer Greg Doms, 48, readies another pitch. For a few minutes, the stress of farming and his off-farm job takes a back seat to the simple joy of hitting baseballs. This year, spending a few precious moments, bat in hand, has seemed nearly cathartic. “I don’t know if I’m visualizing Mother Nature on the face of that ball or what,” Doms laughs.
His seasonal nemesis nearly put him in the ground his family has been tending for four generations. In June, amid the relentless rains Doms ended up in the ER. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” Doms says. “I wasn’t, thank goodness, but it was so much stress mounting up.” For several weeks, doctors searched in vain for the culprit. Today the best guess as to what caused his multiple ailments is stress from farming. Now, thanks to a little honesty, dry weather and a few baseballs, Doms is back on his game.“We live by the F’s,” Doms says. “It goes faith, family, friends, farming and maybe a little fun.”
The Pressure To Succeed Erodes Confidence:
The most difficult endeavor Chris Adams has faced in his nine years of full-time farming is the mental capacity and confidence the profession requires. As a child coming into a successful empire, it might seem like a road paved in gold, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. ”You don’t know whether you can keep the family business going or if you’ll be the generation that fails,“ says Adams, 32. ”I really feel for the younger producers who are in this position, and nobody ever talks about it. While Adams has battled mild depression and confidence issues for most of his life, the mental strain deepened when he transitioned to the farm.
”I felt shadowed by the success of my dad, and I could not picture a scenario where I could add something to the farm,“ he says. ”Without my wife and parents, I would never have even diagnosed myself with depression or even thought I could feel success.” Through counselor visits and support from his family, Adams has learned to manage the day-to-day stress of running a large farm operation, overcome self-doubt and actually feel the success he‘s added to the farm. Loss of a Loved One Deepens Family’s Resolve Four years ago, John Baillie died from a heart event at the age of 71.“Our dad was hauling grain in the semi that day. Mom advised him not to drive after his lunch break [because he wasn’t feeling well],” says daughter Johneen Davis.
“Basically, Dad had always told us he would work until the day he died because he loved farming.” Despite the shock and grief, the family rallied to keep Terra Bona Farms going. Today Davis with husband, Doug; mom, Glenda; sister, Suzanne; and brother-in-law, Troy, run the 975-acre row-crop operation near Piper City, Ill. “Working together on the farm has brought us closer together, true family stewardship,” Davis says. “We have made changes the past few years to be safer, eat healthier and take better care of each other as we balance regular jobs in addition to growing the farm legacy.”
Caregivers Must Care for Themselves Farmers and ranchers have been on a stressful and emotional roller coaster ride in 2019 — and really the past few years. Relentless weather. Volatile markets. Trade wars. Drama in Washington. Machinery breakdowns. Tough financial decisions. Information overload. Family quarrels. These are serious issues that need attention, an understanding team, expert advisers and a proactive plan to deal with the stress. While mental health has many stigmas, agriculture is unique, says Adrienne DeSutter, a farm wife who specializes in behavioral health, specifically agriculture wellness. “Farmers are some of the best caregivers in the world,” DeSutter says. “They care for crops, the land and their animals, but they’re not always the best caregivers of themselves.
”As naturally selfless, ambitious individuals, farmers rarely rely on others to fix something wrong, which makes it hard to reach out when they need help with issues such as depression, DeSutter adds.“ I know I am not the only person to go through this kind of mental stress,” says North Dakota farmer Chris Adams. “I think it is running rampant in all facets of business. However, I think it is far more dangerous in the ag world because traditionally farmers are not much for talking, let alone talking about feelings to someone else.”
Know The Signs Stress affects our body, mind and actions, explains Glennis McClure, University of Nebraska Extension farm and ranch management analyst. Stress symptoms can surface in the form of moodiness, anxiety, chest pain, forgetfulness, sleeping too much or too little, eating too much or too little, increased use of alcohol or withdrawal from others. In David Hulsizer’s case, he became detached. “He’d taken himself out of a lot of different organizations. He didn’t do a lot of extracurricular activities. It was basically go to work, come home and go to bed type activities,” recalls Katie Lyons, his daughter. DeSutter says those signs are different person-to-person.
“Look for something that has changed or multiple things that have changed,” she says. ”At the farm, you might find the livestock is being cared for less or see things looking a little more rundown than normal.” If any of these signs are starting to creep into the picture, DeSutter says the first step is to ask your primary care physician for help. The doctor can then refer you on to a specialist. “In many rural areas, a high percentage of visits to family physicians are due to stress-related illnesses,” says Brandy VanDeWalle, University of Nebraska Extension educator. For Greg Doms, stress was the culprit of multiple health issues.
As a seed-corn grower, his payments are based on how his crops stack up against the neighbor. Added on top, Doms and his wife, Jenny, both have day jobs. “It makes us weekend warriors,” Doms says. “We farm after work, we farm on the weekends, and we push that to the limit in good weather, and with bad weather it just digs that hole deeper.” It isn’t uncommon, during planting, for Doms to work all day, come home, farm until 2 a.m. and then head back to work at seven.
Remember you matter. “If you feel like depression is overwhelming you and you feel that sense of worthlessness and hopelessness, I need you to know your worth is not measured by the markets,” she says. “It’s not measured by your farm. You are a valuable person who needs some help. Talk to anyone who will listen.” After Lyons’ dad died, her family made tough decisions.
They sold portions of the farm so it was more manageable for their family to keep farming. Knowing when it’s time to walk away is what helps keep Lyons and her family going, as well as remembering to enjoy the little things in life. If you need immediate help, call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-8255.To learn the signs of suicidal risk and find more resources to help you manage mental and physical stress, visit www.AgWeb.com/rural-health
11 Ways to Deal With Depression Symptoms Without Drugs.
Also when Nintendo released their handheld Game Boy system in the U.S. and Japan in 1989, the first game most users experimented with was Tetris. Bundled with the system, the clever puzzler—which prompts players to line up a descending array of tiles to create horizontal lines—was the video game equivalent of an addictive drug. Some players described seeing the shapes in their dreams. The game was in the hands of 35 million portable players; by 2010, it had sold 100 million smartphone downloads.
Now, there’s evidence that Tetris players may have a solution to anxiety in the palms of their hands. According to a paper published in the journal Emotion, Tetris has the capability to relieve stress and troubling thoughts by providing a form of distraction.
As part of a larger study about the benefits of distraction, researchers at the University of California, Riverside conducted an experiment on 309 college students who were told to expect some anxiety-provoking news: They were told someone would be offering an evaluation of their physical attractiveness. While they waited for their results, a third of the subjects played a slow-moving, beginner-level version of Tetris; another group played a high-speed variation; and a third played an adaptive version, which automatically adjusted the speed of the game based on the player’s abilities.
Tetris games that were too slow or too fast bored or frustrated players, respectively. But the game that provided a moderate challenge helped reduce the subjects’ perception of their stress levels. They reported a quarter-point higher level of positive emotions on a five-point scale and a half-point reduction of negative emotions. The students still worried about the results of the attractiveness evaluation, but they experienced fewer negative feelings about it.
The key, according to the study, is that the students were experiencing “flow,” a state of mind in which you’re so engrossed in an activity that you lose your sense of self-awareness. While Tetris may be one of the best ways to quickly fall into flow, anything that consumes your attention—playing music, drawing, cooking—is likely to work.
The next time you have to wait for potentially life-altering news, you may find that a Tetris session will help you cope.
Always take symptoms of depression seriously. Don’t try to just handle things on your own. Talk to your doctor and discuss some of the self-help strategies that may support your treatment.
