American farmers are under pressure. Agricultural commodity prices have been punishingly low for five years, and uncertainty over trade and tariff policies is hitting the agricultural sector hard. Meanwhile, historic flooding across the Midwest has damaged or destroyed many farms, and ongoing concerns about climatic shifts have farmers wondering how they’ll hang on in the future.
In the face of these stressors, APA has partnered with the nonprofit Farm Aid to bring attention and resources to farming communities. Specifically, APA is educating psychologists on the specific mental and behavioral health needs of the agriculture community—and how to reach farmers. Such outreach and care is sorely needed in rural regions, where mental and behavioral healthcare are limited. In the great farming state of Iowa, for example, there are only 278 psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants specializing in mental health—that’s just one professional for every 11,151 residents, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Des Moines.
Limited access to mental health resources can feed into stigma in rural communities, where a visit to the town psychologist can’t be camouflaged. “Often, there is a concern, ‘If I park my car or truck outside the clinic, everyone’s going to know,” says Jennifer Fahy, the communications director at Farm Aid. And concealing struggles isn’t just a matter of pride in the tight-knit, competitive world of farming.
“There’s always the fear that if you admit that you are struggling, that somebody is looking over your shoulder, waiting for that farm to go up for sale to buy it from underneath you,” she says.
Meanwhile, even if farmers want mental health care, most lack comprehensive health insurance to pay for it, Fahy notes.
Calls to Farm Aid’s farmer hotlineopens in new window doubled in 2018 compared to 2017, Fahy says, with 53% of the year’s calls representing farmers in crisis. That’s a big change from the early 2000s, she says, when the hotline largely functioned as a hub for networking over breaking into organic farming, or advice about selling locally.
Driving the crises are factors largely outside of farmers’ control, says Michael Rosmann, PhD, a clinical psychologist and farmer who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa. Foremost is the five-year slump in commodity prices. According to Farm Aid, farm net income has dropped 50% since 2013, a cycle that leaves many farmers in debt for land or equipment. Dairy farmers have been particularly affected by low milk prices and high overhead of maintaining a herd.
The good news is that farmers are increasingly attuned to the need for mental and behavioral health care to cope with these challenges, Rosmann says. A poll by the American Farm Bureau Federation in April 2019 of 2,004 adult rural and farming workers, including 81 farmers and farmworkers, found that 91% of rural respondents and 82% of farmers and farmworkers said that mental health is important to them or to their families—and 72% of both groups said they would feel comfortable talking with a therapist about their problems.
“This is important,” Rosmann says. “In the past, people would not talk about this. It shows that there is an increased understanding of the need to manage our behavioral well-being.”
Still, help-seeking remains limited. While 48% of rural residents reported experiencing more mental health challenges compared with one year ago, only 31% had sought assistance. Both farmers and farmworkers and rural residents in general ranked cost, embarrassment, and stigma as their main barriers to seeking help (American Farm Bureau Federation, 2019opens in new window).
“Partnering with APA is really about addressing the aspects that make it harder for farmers to seek mental healthcare and sharing the knowledge that we have about what is different about this population when they do seek mental healthcare,” Fahy says. “For so many this has been passed down for generations and that pressure of being the generation that loses the farm is immense. It’s not just a job for them.”
