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It’s a bleak harvest season on Sean Stanford’s farm south of Lethbridge, where just three inches of rain has fallen since the first of May.

Like many farmers in southern Alberta, the 34-year-old Stanford had high hopes for his crop at the start of the year. But by mid-June the rains had stopped coming and his spring wheat, canola, flax and yellow peas baked in the dried-out fields. Now, it’s time to get the crop off, but Stanford already knows there will be no great payoff once it’s in the bin.

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“The yields are not looking good,” said Stanford. “Basically we’ve just seen a whole year’s worth of work erode away because of something we can’t control.”

The near round-the-clock workload combined with the prospect of negative returns can make harvest a challenging time for any farmer. But for Stanford, who was diagnosed with anxiety almost two years ago, the mental health risks are real. When the negative feelings start to take hold, he makes a conscious choice to get off the combine and seek human contact.