MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS

According to a 2022 Farm Bureau poll, “farmers, ranchers and people in rural areas are more comfortable talking about stress and mental health challenges with others…the stigma around seeking help or treatment has decreased in rural and farm communities but is still a factor.” The GPCAH knows stress and mental health challenges can cause a variety of physical and emotional problems, leading to more injuries and deaths on the farm. We are providing these resources to help farm workers find help when they need it and to train people who work with farmers how they can also help.  

Videos

In this video from The National Corn Growers Association, a Kansas farmer shares his struggle and encourages others to do so as well.

 

Print Resources

Ag Worker Mental Health Training

The GPCAH is providing presentations below (click to download) to anyone interested in helping others understand the stressors facing farmers. This was originally developed and used in 2019 to help crisis volunteers better communicate with farmers experiencing stress. Slides and new resources were added in 2022. Notes are included to discuss how to talk about materials on each slide.

Suicide Prevention Posters (8.5″x11)

Click on the poster below to access posters/handouts that can be used to train individuals and groups about how to talk about suicide on the farm. The documents include information, resources, and tips about recognizing warning signs specific to farmers and their communities. This documentation was finalized in March 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you know?

When compared to other workers, farmers are more likely to die by suicide according to a study published in January 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the Midwest alone, over 1,500 farmers have taken their own lives since the 1980s. 

National Resources

For more information about stress and mental health:

Additional Resources: Mental Health

FarmSafe Podcast

S4E9 | Growing Safely, Part 2: Balancing Farming and Family

Farm families face similar child care access and affordability challenges as other working families nationwide, yet research on their specific experiences and needs is limited. Existing research lacks a deep understanding of how farm families actually use child care, and what types of arrangements and support systems would motivate them to utilize child care more. In this episode, we are joined by Florence Becot, Nationwide Insurance early career professor in agricultural safety and health and a faculty member at Penn State University. Dr. Becot’s work contributes to the field of agricultural health and safety by examining how under-appreciated factors such as child care, health care, and health insurance shape farm families’ ability and willingness to adopt farm safety practices and seek medical care. We discuss Dr. Becot’s current study, which highlights the significant, often overlooked, mental health challenges faced by farm women while raising children.

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S4E5 | The Seed of Success: Growing Your Farm’s Future

In this episode, we tackle the topic of succession planning for family farms.  From financial concerns to family dynamics, and the sheer weight of ensuring the farm continues, the stress of succession planning can take its toll. Our guest, Joy Kirkpatrick, a seasoned professional in farm management and succession planning, shares expert advice on how to navigate the often complex process of transferring farm ownership and leadership to the next generation. We discuss strategies for building the skills of successors, planning what is next for the owner generation, the importance of clear communication, and how to address the financial, legal, and emotional aspects of succession. This episode will offer valuable insights to help you plan ahead and make informed decisions about the future of your farm.

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S3E14 | Support for Farmers’ Mental Health and Well-Being

Did you know May is National Mental Health Awareness Month? We have a few voices on today’s episode to discuss farmers’ mental health. First, you’ll hear from Kentucky farmer Quint Pottinger, owner of Affinity Farms. Then, Emily Krekelberg, Minnesota extension educator and dairy farmer, followed by Tammy Jacobs, Iowa State University Extension outreach and coordinator for the Iowa Concern hotline. In combination, this episode pulls together advice on how to support other farmers and what signs to look for if you or someone you love is struggling.

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S2E7 | What’s Your Normal?

Lesley Kelly works on her farm in Saskatchewan, Canada with her brother and his family, her husband, and her two boys. She is the co-founder of the Do More Agriculture Foundation, and she runs the blog High Heels and Canola Fields.

We talk with her about her and her family’s mental health struggles and how they work to combat the symptoms of living with stress on the farm.

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S2E3 | Women in Agriculture and Stress

Today, we speak with Dr. Carly Nichols, whose research focuses on stress in women in agriculture. She is an assistant professor at the University of Iowa in the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences. Carly talks about her research findings and offers some resources for those who may be experiencing stress.

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S1E20 | Pilot Spotlight – Job Demands and Health Outcomes for Beginning Farmers

We’ve been talking to pilot grant recipients about their projects to learn how they got their ideas, what they learned, and what recommendations they have for other people who are interested in applying. Today, I’m talking with Maya Ramaswamy who received a pilot grant for a project titled, “Identifying job demands and health outcomes among Iowa beginning farmers.” Maya talks about how her interests in farmworkers’ safety, musculoskeletal health, and understudied populations led to a pilot grant.

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S1E19 | Pilot Spotlight – Examining Support Systems for Farmers’ Mental Health

Throughout May, we’ve been talking with pilot grant recipients about their projects to support farmers’ mental health. For today’s episode, I sat down and spoke with Yanni Liang about her 2020 pilot grant, “Examining the role of agricultural cooperatives in protecting farmers’ mental health.” Yanni said the goal of her project was to understand what resources are available that already exist in communities that can potentially help farmers mitigate stress. Academic pilot grants are awarded to students, staff, and faculty at academic institutions to create new agricultural safety and health knowledge or assess best safety and health practices to prevent illness and injury resulting from agricultural work exposures.

We have compiled mental health resources for our listeners. If you, your friends, family, neighbors, or customers are experiencing stress, check out the links provided in the episode resources section. These links provide farmer-specific and state-specific mental health and crisis resources.

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S1E18 | Pilot Spotlight – Airing Out Farm Stress

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so today, we are joined by Meg Moynihan from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Don Wick, host of the TransFARMation podcast, to talk about their project called Airing Out Farm Stress. They received a pilot grant from the Great Plains Center for their project, which aimed to tackle the silence around how the stresses inherent in agricultural production can affect the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of agricultural workers.

What started out as 60-second radio segments turned into a successful podcast, TransFARMation, which covers in-depth mental health topics by sharing farmers’ stories: “Here, you are hearing stories of people like you, other farmers who are talking about really difficult situations that they had to go through, but they came out the other side.”

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S1E17 | Pilot Spotlight – Stress on the Farm: Strategies to Help Each Other

The Great Plains Center funds pilot projects that promote innovative outreach and research efforts to prevent agricultural injury and illness. In this episode, we talk with Dr. David Brown, the behavioral health state specialist at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, about his pilot project that provided suicide prevention training for over 4300 producers and landowners in Iowa. This is the first episode where we talk to pilot grant recipients about their projects, what they did, and how they got the ideas for them.

“We knew that farmers and producers had a lot higher rate of suicide than the general population. We also knew that they had a lot higher rate of depression and anxiety than the general population, and so we felt it was important to get out and to start the conversation about suicide prevention in the agricultural community.”

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S1E6 | Sleep

It’s harvest season and during this busy time, farmers and ranchers may not be getting much sleep. In this episode, we talk with Susan Harris who works with Nebraska Extension, and Amanda Prokasky, a researcher from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. They talk with us about the importance of a good night’s sleep, and what to do if that isn’t possible when a farmer is up all night during calving season or rising early during harvest. They share some tips and tricks about how to rest up, even during the busy seasons.

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