An organizer of a series of farm mental health programs says she’s been hearing what she expected to hear about the need for attention to farmers’ mental health needs during those programs.
Dr. Josie Rudolphi, a researcher at the Marshfield-based National Farm Medicine Center and organizer of a Mental Health First Aid for Rural Wisconsin education series, said it was common to hear program participants say there are needs for people to help many farmers with mental-health issues.
“We’ve seen agribusiness share stories of people they know – farmers they know, their clients – who obviously are very stressed out and are expressing that stress in a number of different ways,” Rudolphi said.
The Mental Health First Aid for Rural Wisconsin project invited agribusiness representatives and others who commonly work with farmers to learn ways to approach and help farmers who are dealing with mental stresses. Seminars were held during the past two weeks in Marshfield, Wausau and Neillsville.
Rudolphi said the participants’ feedback makes it clear that more work has to be done to open rural mental-health discussions and to provide support and care for people dealing with mental-health issues.
Reaching out to farmers through people such as agronomists, lenders and others is a good way to help those farmers who are most stressed, according to Rudolphi. However, she added, many of those people have difficulty in knowing what to do when they’re dealing with a farmer who’s dealing with depression or other mental health issues.
“Agribusiness people aren’t trained in this at all,” she said.
That’s a primary reason Rudolphi said it’s important to have programs such as the Mental First Aid for Rural Wisconsin series.
“In the end, I hope we can develop sort of a network of peers for farmers to turn to,” she said.
Laura Baalrud, a community health educator at HSHS Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s hospitals in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls, was programs’ primary educator. She said the program’s goals included how to identify and respond to farmers’ mental health issues, and where people can help farmers find mental health help.
Some farmers who need help often deny needing that help – in part because of the stigma society has attached to mental health problems, Baalrud said.
“The only way to reduce the stigma is for us to talk more about it,” she said.
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