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All participants described the personal growth that occurred after their suicide attempt. This included re-evaluating their sense of self-worth, their value to their family and friends and rebalancing their work-life balance. For example, Jess perceived his experience of seeking help for his feeling suicidal as essential to helping him transition into the person he has become today:

“I think there was the person I was up until two-thousand and one [when he attempted suicide] and the person I became I absolutely hated and then after about two-thousand and four [after suicide attempt and after seeking help] the person that I sort of hated slowly disappeared and I sort of the person that evolved into who I am now I think” (Jess).

Jess uses very evocative language (“and the person I became I absolutely hated”) to articulate the difficult relationship he had with himself during his suicide experience. The phrase “absolutely hated” described Jess’s self-loathing and how he was coping during the foot-and-mouth difficulties in 2001. Thus, Jess’s suicide attempt seems to represent an ending of the old self, which he felt he hated, and his rebirth into his new identity, which was achieved through seeking help. Thus Jess suggested that his experience of suicidal

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feelings and self-loathing during the foot-and-mouth crisis had motivated Jess to seek help.

The help he received helped remove the part of himself he hated (‘slowly disappeared’); it was transformational. Reflecting on his experience, Jess suggested that his suicidal

experience led to a post-traumatic growth that had helped him evolve as a person. This was also echoed by other participants such as Gunner. In this quote, Gunner reflected on how his suicidal experience helped him to rebalance his farm life with his personal life:

“Football tomorrow and work tomorrow morning and care for our animals and yeah and take each day as it comes and enjoy me food and just enjoy the things we got and get a few things gradually as life goes on and won’t set too bigger targets and not to get like I was for that short period of time” (Gunner).

Gunner’s recovery has been focused on living day to day and in the moment, and focusing on the mundane pleasures of everyday life “take each day as it come” and avoiding targets that are too big to be achievable (“not set too bigger targets”). There is a sense of Gunner being gentle with himself by stating that he is making time for his passion of football

(“football tomorrow”) and enjoying food. He wants to avoid going back to how he was (“and not get like I was”) and frames his period of depression and suicidal feelings as a ‘short period of time’ and a ‘blip’ in an otherwise normal life. For Dan, the end of his suicidal feelings marked a transition point in his life, whereby he felt able to enjoy other pleasures and take stock of what he feels is more precious than working, which he could not before:

“I definitely think so life to me now is so much more precious and since being like this and waking up in the morning and trying to smell the autumn fields to the weather and things are so much more precious” (Dan).

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Whilst for John, personal growth followed seeing homosexuality and suicide among farmers being discussed on Countryfile:

“It actually made it much more gentle and much more dynamic and more and all the things and I think it was really really well done and also in er a programme with great respectability and people who who in the countryside everybody knows Countryfile and everybody would watch it and the approach a subject like that it would make people feel more empathy than they would have done before and more understanding and that would have done a huge amount of good” (John).

Within this extract, John conveys how the television programme sensitively broached homosexuality, which from John’s experience had been ‘unacceptable’ among farmers. The experience seemed to provide John with a sense of empathy to his own situation and what he had endured as a gay farmer. John’s phrase ‘that would have done a huge amount of good’ framed John’s hope that attitudes among farmers towards homosexuality would change thereby improving his self-worth. Therefore, John’s growth was fuelled by his perceived sense of acceptance of his sexuality among the farming community.

Equally, Bez found his suicidal experience transformational, as it led him to pursue a career in mental health and fundraising for mental health charities. Bez’s experience of suicidal feelings helped him re-evaluate his work ethic and how this influenced his mental health whilst he was farming. In the following extract, Bez discusses his decision to leave farming as vitally important in helping him meet new people and enabling him to have conversations about mental health that he would not have been able to have when he was farming:

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“The happy ending the consequence of going through all of that was that I made some great friends people I would never have met before erm I have got a great career now unrelated to farming which I would never have had before erm in a completely different field yeah. You know the sorts of conversations we have now are completely different than we ever had you know back in the day. So for example my brother was physically unwell erm so his son rung me up and asked if I could help him out on the farm which I love cos it is like I love going playing farmers (laughs) but now and again ’cos I can walk away and leave it, and so anyway I went up there and erm so it was me and my nephew and his friend and we had a day working with sheep and er we got chatting I knew his friend not that well but I knew him. Sort of chatting catching up with the farmers and stuff and a bit of the local gossip as you do and he just sort of really naturally then just started talking about one of his

neighbours really struggling with his mental health and erm and how he was having to reduce his workload and recognise that he has got some mental problems and he was feeling suicidal and quite low at the moment and need to take a bit of a life change and we had this and I just came away think we would never have had a conversation like that you know” (Bez).

Within this extract, there were three points raised by Bez. Firstly, he describes a ‘happy ending’ and a ‘pay-off’ for his lived experience of suicidal feelings; his choice to leave farming thus marks a personal and transformative growth that has enabled him to meet new people and pursue a new career. Moreover, Bez’s framing of his suicide experience as having a ‘happy ending’ is also meaningful. The ‘happy ending’ inferred that Bez had considered the positives of leaving farming, such as the opportunity to meet new people and make friends with people he would not have met whilst farming due to the isolation

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and culture of farming at that time. Secondly, since leaving farming and pursuing his new career, in which talking about mental health is more acceptable, Bez felt more comfortable to talk about mental health with farmers – albeit the younger generation of farmers – rather than feeling ashamed. Thus, Bez’s new career normalised his experience of depression and suicidal feelings in the context of farming, so he has grown confident and accepting of himself. Thirdly, the phrase ‘playing farmers’ suggests that part of the reason he is well now is that he can choose when he wants to be a farmer – ‘playing’ captures the idea of

temporarily assuming a role rather than this being his identity, and one wedded to various pressures, responsibilities and expectations. Thus, Bez felt freer after leaving farming and is now able to appreciate farming in a different way.