Governments and organizations that provide mental health support to farmers dealing with depression, anxiety and isolation have traditionally focused on overcoming the stigma associated with getting help - but that isn't the barrier farmers face, according to a new study by a research team led by rural sociologists at Penn State. The bigger issues, they found, are rural health care shortages, long wait times for appointments and travel time, as well as high health care costs.
The team said the most recent findings from their ongoing five-year study, published in the Journal of Rural Studies, suggest that more effective programs with added resources to address financial challenges - including efforts to help farmers navigate complex and time-consuming paperwork - could do far more to help farmers.
Farmers experience mental health problems at up to five times the national rate, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, often related to stress caused by financial pressure and debt, uncertainty about weather and markets, and worries about farm succession and labor shortages. These concerns can be compounded by isolation in rural areas. Despite several organizations and governmental bodies investing in mental health programs for farmers such as counseling, suicide hotlines and educational workshops, many farmers still don't use available support. According to the researchers, it was believed that this unwillingness resulted primarily from the social stigma associated with mental health challenges.
"This study is the first to look simultaneously at farmers' willingness to seek help as well as their ability to actually get it," said study senior author Florence Becot, Nationwide Insurance Early Career Professor and Agricultural Safety and Health Program leader in the College of Agricultural Sciences. "Overall, the investments in programs have been made with limited understanding of farmers' ability and willingness to engage with mental health support."
Becot has been studying the mental health struggles farm families face - ranging from coping with extreme weather, volatile markets, limited health care and child care access, low incomes, worries about losing the farm, and the physical toll of farm work - and what to do about the situation, for more than a decade. She has advised agricultural policymakers in Washington D.C. on strategies to address the problem.
Other studies on this subject, she explained, have been focused on one of two perspectives: Asking how farmers respond to stress, investigating whether they are willing to get help; or determining what mental health care looks like in rural areas, considering cost, accessibility and acceptability.
