Tackling Mental Health Among Farmers

SALT LAKE CITY (DTN) -- Marshal Sewell, a strawberry grower in Plant City, Florida, is spotlighted in new Ad Council public service announcements encouraging farmers and rural residents to get mental health help.

"We come from a long line of farmers and there's a sense of pride. There's also a significant amount of pressure," Sewell said in the ad.

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) on Sunday announced a pair of collaborations related to rural mental health. One effort takes a project started by the Farm Foundation to offer free, anonymous online mental health services for farmers, ranchers and their families.

The AFBF also is working with the Ad Council to create the "Love, Your Mind" campaign, an effort to reduce the stigma around mental healthcare in rural areas. The campaign features Sewell, a mental health advocate as well as a farmer. In one ad, Sewell talks about losing his father, who also was a farmer. The ad indicates Sewell's father succumbed to some of the pressures he was facing.

"It breaks my heart that my father made a permanent decision for a temporary issue," said Sewell, who founded the organization Mind Your Melon.

Georgia farmer Zippy Duvall, AFBF president, said everyone has struggles and "I had my own struggles," and added, "It's OK not to be OK, but it's not OK not to say anything." Duvall added he began feeling better once he started talking about his issues.

"Mental well-being of our rural Americans is a priority for American Farm Bureau and has been for several years now," Duvall said.

The challenges of farming are getting bigger with the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, increasing cost of production, weather disasters and "all the things that we toil with each and every day. It takes a real heavy load on our back," Duvall added.

To offer free counseling nationally, AFBF and several other groups are joining the Farm Family Wellness Alliance, a project initially launched by the Farm Foundation in Iowa four years ago. The project then was expanded to Illinois as well. Last year, the alliance added a service to allow "anonymous peer-to-peer support" as farmers shared their challenges and help with each other.

Under the program overseen by licensed professionals, farmers connect with other farmers. If needed, a farmer, rancher or their family could also be referred to free services directly with a mental health professional. Services are available 24 hours a day as well.

"Farmers or ranchers struggling with life pressures will now have access to peer network and professional counseling free of charge," Duvall said. "And this is so incredible that we have this and ... access to them."

The alliance now includes Farm Foundation, AFBF, National Farmers Union, Land O'Lakes, CoBank, 4-H and Future Farmers of America (FFA). Other organizations also are coming on board, Duvall said.

Shari Rogge-Fidler, president and CEO of the Farm Foundation, has been one of the driving forces behind the new program. As a fifth-generation farmer herself, she said she knows first-hand the stressors that are part of farms and rural life.

"I'm beyond thrilled that we are now able to combine these services together for people 16 years and older," Rogge-Fidler said.

Rogge-Fidler said the final piece of the puzzle was finding more partners to broaden the reach of the programs nationally. She was pleased with the organizations that have come together for the alliance but also called on other groups to partner as well.

"One of the taglines that was during the pilot phase was 'When you feel better, you farm better.' So, let's get started helping more farm families feel better so that we can all farm better," Rogge-Fidler said.

Speaking to DTN afterward, Rogge-Fidler said there were farmers and family members who visited the alliance booth Sunday asking about how they could connect with a peer or counselor.

"It really shows just how much of a need there is for these kinds of services," she said.

AFBF also announced it is teaming up with the Utah-based Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council for the series of public service announcements to be broadcast nationally.

A new ad campaign encourages farmers and rural Americans to get help for mental health. David Eldridge of the Huntsman Institute at the University of Utah cited some sobering numbers from research with the Ad Council indicating 63% of adults living in rural areas report having a mental health condition.

"It can be depression, anxiety or otherwise but only a third of them get help or treatment," Eldridge said.

Much of that disparity in getting help is due to the stigma surrounding mental health. Eldridge said too often rural residents view help for mental health as a sign of weakness.

"We can eradicate the shame and the stigma because mental health is brain health. Your brain is an organ in the body and sometimes it needs help as well," he said.

For more information about the Farm Family Wellness Alliance, go to

https://www.farmfoundation.org/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com.

Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ChrisClaytonDTN.

(c) Copyright 2024 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.