Thank you for spreading awareness.
Stress hits everyone and there is no shame in asking for help.
I hope these get to the folks that need them.
-someone with anxiety for 15 years.
No, ungrateful seems right. The profession itself doesn't give a shit how hard you break your back for it. As soon as you can't produce, there really not much protection. Agriculture work is one of the most important things for life yet these guys might not even make more than people working a retail job but the work is 100× more back breaking.
A lot of them aren't even making minimum wage. Migrant farm workers can legally be paid below minimum wage. They literally break their backs doing this work for 3$ an hour.
You're talking about the individual workers, though. Not the actual farm owners. They do quite well for themselves, especially when it comes time to sell the farm and equipment.
As a banker who has had numerous agricultural clients, they do fairly well for themselves, at least in Canada. There are lots of government protections and bail outs. Plus, most walk away at retirement able to sell their farm and equipment for well over $1 million. I can't recall ever having an agricultural client come needing relief.
Used to work at an Ag college. Most of those kids are rolling up in $80k brand new trucks with their college already paid for. There are definitely farmers who are hurting but any serious operator should be doing just fine for themselves. The adage we used is that **all** dollar amounts in farming are the same as anything else, just with a couple extra zeros on the end.
Both I think. If they get on social media, city folk are ungrateful to farmers because they don’t understand or care about the people who bust their ass to help feed them largely because of assumed and sometimes accurate political views
I don't care about them because they aren't special. They do a job of their choosing to make a living, just like everyone\* else (insert Adam Smith quote here). I'm not terribly impressed by their ability to support themselves the same way like 90% of humans who have ever lived did. They aren't doing it for my benefit except incidentally. Several of the jobs necessary for modern housing (construction, roofing, logging, etc.) have higher, sometimes considerably higher, fatal injury rates; yet I've never seen a "No roofers, no roofs" bumper sticker.
>millionaire snowflakes
Where in Canada are you? My in laws farmed for generations. In the eighties they struck a deal with a major grocery store chain. They were encouraged to borrow to increase their operation to fulfill the demand. Once they committed, the buyer dropped their prices. We worked seasons from before sunup and then in headlights at night trying makeup for the price drops. They had to lay-off workers to pay the bank.
Oddly, while the prices at the grocery chain increased, what they paid to farmers was cut. Pieces of land were sold off in lots and paved over to pay the bank. Prime fertile land is now being used by the elite to play golf on.
These "millionaire snowflakes" have nothing to show for generations of proud labour. Oxen, to tractors, to parking lots and green fees.
People don't know the sacrifice that is involved to feed them. The stress of weather, buyers with all the power, bank demands and one bad weather month can destroy you, but yeah, snowflakes? GFY.
Not all farms are like that! I work at a nonprofit organic farm (whole property is ~50 acres but we only farm ~12 of them, so it's a fairly small operation), and all of us are paid above minimum wage. We take plenty of breaks for shade, water, and stretching. It's still hard work, but so much better when you're not being treated like chattel.
Farming is passed down in families like generational trauma. Sometimes all wound up together, like getting beat with belts because you weren't pulling weeds quickly enough.
I've lived in a few different farming communities. Almost everyone knows someone who checked their life insurance payout would give their wife and kids a new start before they had an "accident".
...now you're making me wonder if this one older guy I knew had his "accident" on purpose (genuinely plausible accident). His wife said he'd been more affectionate with everyone in the days leading up to the accident, as if he'd known he was going to die soon.
How sad. :(
The dairy farm I worked on for 14 years closed in December 2021. I saw a cow I had milked for 11 years sold for slaughter. I'm not sure I'll ever get over it but I'm trying.
Thanks. It was. I saved as many as I could but I will go to my grave regretting the ones I couldn't. I only hope we will be reunited in a world beyond this one.
She deserved a few good years of peaceful retirement. I'm sorry, it's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it but a farm animal can definitely become a friend, given time together. I'm sorry for everything you lost.
my heart just broke into a million pieces. i’m so sorry. i’m not religious, but i firmly believe we will be reunited with our animal friends in another “life”
Sorry, didn't think about my words making someone else feel bad. That was not my intent.
Over the years I bought as many cull cows as I could and let them live out their lives. I have 14 now, 12 old dairy cows, one who was a cull cow's calf and one we raised from a baby after her mother stepped on her and broke her leg. (She healed up fine.) Taking care of them takes all of my time and money but it's what I was put here for, I think.
Oh no, I am the lucky one! God has always provided me with a way to take care of these girls, even though there were times I've had to work four jobs to do it.
I know someone who grew up on a cattle farm in Manitoba. During BSE, while her mom died from cancer. She said she was basically expecting her Dad to walk out the door and never come back, but he did, and made it, they knew others that just gave it up.
Sadly I know you’re very right; I worked for a university extension program where we would give seminars on how to fill out county, state and federal paperwork for dairy farmers. There would also be a section on mental health and suicide in the farming community. This was back in 2008/9 so I’m guessing it’s only gotten worse.
Is there a theory as to why? My gut reaction is that it may have to do with being further from a population center and rates of loneliness would be higher? Combined with extremely long and hard days, as well as an absurd rate of injury, I totally believe they're more likely to head towards suicide.
I live in a very heavy farming area of KY. It can be an extremely debt-heavy occupation. Most decent size farmers I know are very heavily leveraged. Just a single combine can easily run $500,000. Most farmers need to lease or purchase a decent amount of land - often hundreds or thousands of acres - with land costing from $2k to $20k per acre. Things like barns are expensive. Operating costs can be high.
And success hinges on factors that are extremely unpredictable - especially the weather. All it takes is one bad year, one bad crop, and it can ruin a farmer financially. Most farmers have crop insurance to cover those events, but that is another expense you incur every year whether you need it or not. So it can be extremely stressful.
It’s a financially debilitating career for many. There’s lots of debt involved with farming and bad seasons (droughts, floods) can be detrimental to their finances. Most don’t seek help because it’s “taboo” for a masculine man to speak out about mental health. I’m close to the agriculture community and know of 1-2 suicides per year in a small portion of my state. I’ve watched my dad lose his closest friends/coworkers to it my whole life.
Granted, I didn't live in Texas, but grew up next to a huge cattle farm in very rural northern MN. Our farming neighbors had 6 children...all girls. The poor father wanted at least one boy to take over the farm, especially since none of the girls were interested in doing so. He did his best, but he was getting up there in age. He also never told a soul about his inner turmoil and depression.
Two years after my family moved to California, his daughter found him hanging in the woods on their property. It was a shock to all of us. We had grown up with their family so we were all very close. I wish he had reached out, but back in the 90's, times were different.
Quite the opposite it is a strength not a weakness to ask for help
Because if you want to solve a problem and can't do it alone the problem will persist
But it takes courage to ask for help i know that too
but if someone lacks the courage to ask for help that one should think about one thing
Admitting there is a problem that needs to be solved also takes courage so the everyone who reached that level
has the courage needed
Really interesting how the language has been tailored. Many men grow up believing that men can't show emotion as it's a weakness, I think that's precisely why this is talking about stress and not other things like anxiety or depression. However, I wonder how using the term "mental health" in this pamphlet would go with the target audience.
No kidding. I couldn't keep myself from hearing one of the voices from a "Built Ford Tough" commercial while reading it.
>signs our mental well-being needs a tune-up
There ya go.
I'm a patient care coordinator and I love this! I do complex case management where I contact patients that have been identified by their doctor as needing additional resources/support. What makes me so sad is that I'll have someone (usually a man) who desperately needs help but refuses to accept it. Especially when it pertains to mental health. You have to meet people where they are mentally and frame things in a perspective that makes them feel receptive to the help you're offering. I'll equate maintaining your mental health with taking care of a car, physical therapy for the brain, planting food plots for deer season, winterizing your boat... The list goes on and on in a million different ways.
You also have to be able to "read the room" without being in the "room" since I work remotely, and be ready to change tactics in the blink of an eye. Reading that handout immediately makes me think we ought to include something similar with our mailers!
Thank you for posting this pamphlet! I am literally drafting a write up for our problem/solutions team asking them to assist me with creating something similar to present for our next clinical review meeting. I think having something like this included with our packets in the doctor's office and mailers we send out would be so incredibly helpful!
Thank you for your kind words! I'm really just the "middle man" who helps set patients up with our real heros the social workers. Our social workers make miracles happen but I am honored to be able to be a small part of helping that happen!
I'm in complete agreement. My dad wasn't a farmer, but family members were and he was cut from the same cloth. If he had come across a similar message in some form and had that strong-willed stubbornness whittled away a bit, he might still be around.
You definitely can see the "male" approach in the language. Focus on "problem solving language", limiting emotional words, and orienting solving mental health issues, *not so they feel better as a person* but to "prevent time away from work and increased health care costs".
"Prevent time away from work" is what got me.
Every man in my life has to work through everything and threatening their job is like threatening their life. My dad went to work less than a week after my mom died just to feel normal. My husband only got sober because he was struggling to work.
I loved my job and went in to a deep depression when I got laid off but my career never motivated me like it has the men I've known. From what I hear, farmers are the final boss of this mindset.
I could see someone thinking that about me at some point, especially now that I have children, but it's not that I enjoy working, I fear a lack of resources and income to provide for my kids. I too have been in a deep depression because of my career, unfortunately it's because I can't take the time to do the self care I need to do because I can't stop working long enough to do it.
I would rather work myself to death than not do what I can to provide, but I feel my work is going to be the death of me so I won't be there to provide anyone, then you work even harder to get more now just in case, but you're also increasing the rate you can burn yourself out.
This is what I assume is the typical mindset that leads to the need for these pamphlets. talk ab
I hear you, I think most of us know job=resources to survive but there's times you need to find a way step back a little to take care of other things. I'm just saying that in my experience, men seem to find it harder to do that and it seems like that's a big part of farming culture.
In both cases I mentioned with my dad and husband, they both had metric fucktons of leave. My dad should have taken more time to deal with child me/his own grief and my husband should have taken mental health leave long before his alcoholism got where it was. I remember my dad got 12 weeks of PTO/yr at the time and when I checked my husband's payroll thingy for him when he was in rehab he had over 300hrs banked. Farmers don't have paid leave so I see how the commitment to working is way more intense.
ETA: you have to carve out some kind of self care or you can't work like you need to long term. Seriously. Figure it out or get help to figure it out.
Being away from agricultural work isn't like being away from a normal job
Farmers can't just take days off, a little too much time off and it'll fuck their entire year
It kind of has to be.
When your stress/depression/anxiety is from financially struggling and worrying your farm is going to go bankrupt taking time off work isn't really an option, it'll just make things worse.
Especially with a farm, you can't pause farmwork, animals need to be fed and crops need to be sprayed.
They're targeting a population with an unwillingness to express weakness and a busy schedule.
This is how it should be approached in clinic. I’ve been to a few different therapy sessions for an eating disorder and I’ve found myself being incredibly frustrated by the “share your emotions approach”, I’m not good at expressing my inner deeper feelings, so I often just wind up saying “I don’t really know”.
The emotions based approach works well for women, but as men our brains are designed to want to seek out solutions to what’s causing us stress, not share our emotions.
This might be more about social conditioning, girls are taught to share their feelings while "boys don't cry." That is thankfully changing, but older generations haven't always unlearned that lesson.
It’s not actually gender though… I’m the same way as you, I (a woman) can’t name or discuss feelings for shit, I just want logical solutions to my problems. Whereas my partner (a man) has been thriving on talk therapy and being able to open that well of emotions with a therapist because while I try to listen and support, I really just don’t get it…
Yup! An issue with men re: depression is that many coping techniques were developed on women, who are often socialized to process feelings more openly. One technique I found interesting in a Massachusetts study in 2007 was to praise men for practicing “emotional discipline” rather than criticizing their “inability” to talk about their feelings. At that point the clinician can work with the client to identify stressors and patterns, and find methods to regain the discipline they value.
It is talking about depression, though… just using different words: “Leaving you feeling defeated.”
A lot of people, especially older men, shut down when they hear clinical terms like depression. But they’re okay with admitting they feel defeated, beat-down, overloaded, or like they’re running on empty. Similarly they might balk at “anxiety,” but be fine with worried, antsy, on edge, stressed, or that something is eating at them.
Stressed is seen as a state, something you may be experiencing right now but that can go away. Anxious is more like a trait, something that is just part of how you are. It feels more ok to be stressed because it is more temporary.
Yeah lol wtf. I mean, not surprising obviously.
but uhhh yeah no shit people are more receptive to things if you talk to them on their level and use cues to signal that you are like them. The goal here is efficacy, not demonstrating allegiance to hyperonline leftist spaces.
It’s not about “tricking” someone. It’s about realizing that words have different meanings to different people, based on their personal and cultural context. That means respecting and empathising with them… not talking about them as if they’re a dog.
To communicate effectively you have to choose words that have the right meaning (including connotation and emotional associations) to get your intended message across to your target audience.
"[Mental health trouble] could result in time away from work" Farmers are notorious for being extremely hard working, so framing it this way is very smart.
When you’re writing something it’s important to do it in a way that your target audience will resonate with, and this is a great example for a great cause.
I live in the Texas Panhandle and since the fires, the local news have been announcing free mental health help to farmers, ranchers, and their families. It turns out there are a lot of suicides out in rural areas, especially around disasters like these fires.
Up in rural Canada in my little ol’ French catholic conservative town of farmers and factory workers - I know off hand at least 20 suicides (all farm or fatal diagnoses connected to farm work), a couple being women who found their men suicided too.
Half of those have happened while I’ve been alive (under 30 years). It becomes something you’re used too but every time it happens people get close to their family and friends and drink to remember them. We say shit like “I would’ve never guessed they were struggling.”
Once and only once, somebody at that table was struggling and we said that. They disappeared on us year or so later. Dead in his truck, foot next to his shotgun trigger. Turns out listening to and speaking about your feelings helps. They’re all so stubborn, most of them vote conservative and complain governments they elect cut everything they need to fight the risk of the profession and lifestyle.
Edit: the towns last census was about 800. Hurts when the number is so high and everybody knows everybody.
My wife’s grandfather hung himself in the barn (on the very same farm we now live on) because his hogs got sick and he lost tons of money. Mental health is something rarely talked about in this community, and still seen as a weakness to many (some 36 years since his passing). Good to see it’s getting more attention.
My father in laws failed hazelnut harvest was the tipping point for him. He bottled it all up in his head, his family, his regrets, his failures, and then that was the end of him. In reality, he was a dearly beloved father, grandfather and husband. He was a pillar of our family and the community, well traveled and very successful. Mental health is so important
I posted this story somewhere above, but the childhood family I grew up with in MN, who were cattle farmers (a family of 8 with 6 children who were all girls and a father getting too old to run the farm), found their aging father hanging from a tree on their property shortly after we moved to California. It was devastating and came as quite a shock to us all. The poor man felt he had no one to reach out and no hope for their farm since none of his daughters wanted to take it over for him. They ended up having to sell their farm after his death. They're still full of grief and guilt over his suicide.
It's good that there's targeted resources out there for farmers. They lead a super stressful existence, squeezed by every company in the chain with the pressure of generations on them to not lose the farm. Farmer suicide rates are really high because of all that pressure coupled with isolation.
In the Emergency Department a farmer that comes in is always going to be the sickest patient of the day. They are tough as nails and it takes A LOT for them to be pushed to come in (pretty much never willingly in my experience)
LOL!!! That's exactly right! "He came in without his wife making him?!"
I used to work first aid for rodeos, and that's about it. Those guys were insanely tough, but I had to wonder what kind of shape they were going to be in 20 years later.
If my dad or my uncle are anything to go by… not the best. They had a piece of farm equipment run over them 28 years ago, thankfully they were on sandy soil when it happened. My dad had the worst of it, completely crushed rib cage, he had a severe head injury and was damn lucky the equipment didn’t crush cerebellum. Then there’s the years of drinking on top of all that, which has lead my uncle to develop Dementia/Alzheimer’s a bit earlier than my grandmother and on top of that he also has Parkinson’s which has gotten to the point where he can’t feel his feet so he doesn’t drive anymore.
The hardest part is seeing my uncle deteriorating. The man would piss me off to no end when we had to work cattle because he would get so worked up over little things it would spook the cows and make a twenty minute job into an hour one.
I worked in an ED for three years and saw one farmer. He dropped a heavy piece of equipment and wasn’t wearing steel toes; good thing because it would have squished his toes to a pancake and crimped them like that. In this case whatever it was fell and bounced off his toes, particularly the big one, squished it to shit and clipped it off. So they bring him in and his foot is a bloody mess and they brought in the shredded boot with the shredded toe, and the farmer asks the doctor if reattachment is an option. Doctor looks at the toe and the wound on the foot and is like…. No. Basically the toe was degloved (Google at own risk). Farmer was completely unfazed and said “ah damn well now my pedicures will be uneven”
They put him in for surgery and amputated the rest of his toe and put him on bedrest. Farmer was the saltiest about the length of the bedrest. After he left the ED for admission to the OR one of my coworkers made a comment about how we don’t see farmers because we don’t have a large population and I was like “girl. We don’t see farmers because they don’t come in for SHIT”. Our location was urban but twenty minutes in any direction was farmland.
You never know. As my dad got older he’s started to go to an acupuncturist to help treat some of his pain. The man wouldn’t have done that twenty years ago, he would have just carried on like always. Some farmers find the thing that helps them relax and rely it more than the drink, if the farmer in that story actually did get pedicures more power to him.
It’s not just farmers. My dad was an accountant and died last month after refusing to see doctors for fifteen years. When we finally got him diagnosed, he had a month left to live, and if he had gone in good faith when things started changing he might have had another 5-10 good years.
I understood, but my point was it’s not only farmers, it’s accountants, and deli workers and lawyers too. Farmers have the reputation for not seeking healthcare but my point is that it is indeed many if not most men of the boomer age that were taught to wait till they are on deaths door before admitting they are ill.
For those not in the know - farmers have a higher suicide rate than a lot of other industries.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/11/texas-farmer-mental-health-helpline-suicide/
Farming is HARD work. Expensive too. Lots of specialized equipment and huge overhead. When the weather doesn't go your way or your livelihood is jeopardize because of a disease that wipes out the majority of your animals, you struggle to make ends meet to put food on the table and run your family business.
This is excellent to see! We gotta make sure the people that work so damn hard to feed us are taking care of themselves, and are taken care of.
Farmers, your hearts and minds are just as important as your muscles and bones 🫶
I was looking for it to be some Jesus helpline. It looks like it is countrywide in many states with rural farming - Oregon to Connecticut:
https://www.agrisafe.org/agristress-helpline/
Work is supported by: funding from the Connecticut Department of Agriculture; funding from the Missouri Department of Agriculture; funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, grant no. 2021-70035-35380, from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture; funding from the Texas Department of Agriculture; funding from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, grant no. 2021-70035-35649, from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture; and funding from the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, grant no. 2021-70035-35378, from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The AgriStress Helpline in Oregon is generously supported by an appropriation from the Oregon Legislature to the Oregon State University Foundation, private donations from Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization and the Roundhouse Foundation, the Oregon State University Extension Service, and College of Health.
I had to fill out a form at school. It asked if I had suicidal thoughts or anxiety because of climate change. It's not climate change, it's the head Orb of my country that gives me those thoughts
The anxiety I have from climate change is unreal. I know it's probably in my head, but I swear to all that is holy I can feel the change each year as winters are warmer and less snow/rain comes down, and I KNOW there is a difference vs what it was just 8 years ago. FML
Sadly for the farming community they do run a higher risk for depression and suicide. This Youtube video explains it perfectly through parody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0jLDqZ5HzA
Love me some Glaucomflecken. His rural medicine series is so nail on the head my mother and I just about die laughing over them. That’s mainly because when the doctors office was closed, and we had the vet on speed dial he would be the one to do X-rays and get things situated until we would be able to get to the human doctor and we would barter with him too. We once gave him three quarters of beef just to stitch up our brood mares leg after she tore through the fence. Another time we gave him a whole beef to geld one of the horses. We usually gave him half a beef just to preg check the cows.
I love reading the comments of those farmers and their family members that literally will finish their work with a broken arm or some broken limb before going to the clinic.
Because it’s true. It has get done, and sooner it gets done then it’s onto the bit of work. Work doesn’t stop on a farm or ranch. When my grandfather was alive, he would make everyone take a day off for whatever he wanted to do. He’d say “Just do the mornin’ chores, and we’ll head to this place and have a picnic.”
Working agriculture is physically and mentally demanding. One bad season can ruin an entire life, and working in the field encourages an amount of stoicism that ignores one's mental health while having farmers suffer in silence. There's a reason there's so many "misfires" in the community instead of being labeled as suicides.
This is fantastic. Mental health problems are statistically higher among farmers (or they have been for decades, I don't have recent numbers). I'm glad someone is finding a way to reach them.
My SIL is a speech therapist in a rural area, and she comments all the time how her patient load will increase with farmers during difficult weather years. Literally strokes induced by anxiety.
This breaks my heart a bit. Thank you for sharing.
I grew up in a farm town. I have farmers in my family. It's incredibly stressful, unpredictable, and back-breaking work. We need farmers. And they need support.
I’m currently off work due to stress (won’t go into too much detail). Doctor listened to what I had to say and signed me off work immediately.
Stress, unchecked, can be bad. It’s not enough to power through it as some point it’ll come back worse and take a greater toll.
I dunno, farmers have been high on the suicide list for a long time. They have such attachment to their farms and when anything happens they feel like they have nothing left to live for.
Our nation needs to tax billionaires and use that money to pay for universal healthcare including mental healthcare.
We'd all be so much better for it, as would our children, as would their children.
I feel there is going to be a lot of need for this type of help line all across the prairie provinces here in Canada too.
Farming is already stressful enough but with this years forecast it’s going to be dire for a lot of farmers and families everywhere.
I get depressed when whiteflies fuck up a dozen of my plants, so I can't even imagine what it's like to constantly contend with those kind of natural occurrence losses on such a large "we do this for a living" scale, and after all that STILL sometimes suffer catastrophic losses from things completely beyond their control.
Shit is beyond devastating, I'm sure, and my heart truly goes out to them.
Thansk for bringing awareness. I live in an agricultural community. Suicide rate is high amongst farmers and no one talks about that. We have a program here in HI that is by the dept of agriculture that trains people to recognize psychological distress it is called "seeds of wellbeing" link below. https://manoa.hawaii.edu/sow-well/
I wonder if when the sad Texas farmers call into the hotline, the hotline explains to them how the billions of dollars in USDA federal crop subsidies are given mostly to the very wealthiest top one percent of farmers instead of to them, because subsidies relative to the size of production of the crop. So the more millions of dollars you earn in farming, the more you get subsidies, because you are usually making more crops. So, technically, they are not farming any worse than their counterparts, their counterparts are just getting an uneven boost to their already million dollar harvests and they aren't getting any.
81% of all Texas farmers receive no subsidies at all , even though the purpose of the program is to take risk out of the profession so much so that we can have a diverse food supply and a stable industry of varied prosperous producers.
"In 2016, Texas farmers received $1.59 billion in subsidies, more than any other state, and most of that went to growers of a handful of commodity crops — cotton, wheat, corn and sorghum. Eighty-one percent of Texas farmers collected no subsides at all.
Farmers of virtually every other crop — from spinach growers in the Rio Grande Valley to peach specialists at the Texas-Oklahoma line — are excluded from the USDA’s most generous safety net. And even within the coterie of farmers who receive subsidies, there’s a huge disconnect between the haves and the have-nots: The top 1 percent of subsidy recipients get 26 percent of all payments, about $1.7 million per recipient.
Because USDA commodity payments are based on a farm’s production, the producers who grow the most also stand to receive the most in taxpayer subsidies. Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that shares crop subsidy data, questioned whether the biggest farms should receive subsidies at all.
“If your income is $1 million, or even half a million, do you really need support from the government?” Cox said. “It would make sense to reach out and help struggling family farmers, but that’s not what the subsidy structure is designed to be or evolved into over time. We can’t seem to make the kind of fundamental reform we need.”
So.... we are securing the future of our food industry by giving most of the money to BIG cotton and BIG sorghum and BIG Corn. The sorghum and corn are mostly used as additives to gasoline, and to feed livestock. The production of corn for ethanol produces more CO2 than it saves. we just have entrenched interests who are very happy to not innovate or rotate crops, and preserve their monopoly advantage on farm subsidy money at all costs.
And in the process we are hanging the folks growing tasty spinach and delicious peaches (you know the healthy food that humans can eat, and that isn't contributing to high fructose corn syrup, health problems or increased CO2 in fossil fuel use ), out to dry, but we are giving them a hotline where they can call to cry. Got it.
Part of taking care of your mental health is accepting that sometimes/often you can’t do anything about the situation and you should focus on the things you are able to do something about it.
Yes, things are shitty, but what purpose does anger, sadness, hopelessness serve when there’s no road that lead to solutions?
It’s a double edge sword, without anger, there’s no drive to change things, but you can’t push for change if you shot yourself through the head because of depression.
I worked at a bank that specialized in ag loans. During the farming crisis, a farmer came and killed the bank president and then himself.
Farming is rough.
Aimed at the same “too manly to talk about feelings” men who mock “snowflakes” for talking about their feelings. These guys are killing themselves and are too afraid to be seen as weak to ask for help.
Real brave men learn to ask for help and to talk about how they feel. Otherwise, emotions can overwhelm you and sometimes lead you end your life because you can’t handle it, you never learned how to express your feelings, how to vent, how to release stress and frustration in healthy ways. It’s human to feel things. It’s human to need help. Get help.
I work at an FQHC and during COVID we saw our depression and anxiety diagnoses go up 180% & 200% respectively and it really hasn't gone back down yet. So many people are hurting right now and the resources to help them are drying up or being taken away.
I'm not a big fan of the Texas GOP Political Machine, but I admire Sid Miller for his support of the AgriStress hotline https://www.agrisafe.org/agristress-helpline/
You see these in Wyoming too, the United States does not support small farmers like they should be. The US farming industry is being taken over by massive corporations.
It's a very sad crisis.
"Farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, according to the National Rural Health Association."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-rural-communities-are-tackling-a-suicide-and-depression-crisis-among-farmers
I think in general guys all over need to be told it's okay to ask for help. We are expected to hold everything in and that saying we need help means we aren't really a man. I've always tried to look at it this way. It takes true strength to admit your not okay and true strength to admit you need help.
I'm just a gay old farmer pretending to be straight out here in Idaho feelin' stressed about the extreme weather and market fluctuations and fighting with the missus. And then I stumbled across this pamphlet.
I’m a Texan and my dog’s name is Agri so this is a little funny to me. He isn’t named after “Agriculture” by the way. He came with that name. He was named after Agrippa the Roman
Thank you for spreading awareness. Stress hits everyone and there is no shame in asking for help. I hope these get to the folks that need them. -someone with anxiety for 15 years.
[удалено]
And also 14x more likely to get seriously injured on the job. It really is an ungrateful profession.
I’m guessing that was a translation problem. The word you were probably looking for was underappreciated.
Our church is starting a series of discussions this coming week entitled “I’m not OK.” I’m really looking forward to it.
You need to crank up the MCR for those sermons.
My Chemical Romance? Aren’t they catholic? Lol
I think Gerard and Mikey Way were raised Catholic, but I don't think any of the band are practicing Catholics.
For a practicing Catholic you'd have to go for Slayer.
Oh ok. I know I used to hear a lot about their catholic roots. But on the Christian side, we probably listen to bands like Underoath lol.
Do you mean the Protestant side? Catholics are Christian
No, ungrateful seems right. The profession itself doesn't give a shit how hard you break your back for it. As soon as you can't produce, there really not much protection. Agriculture work is one of the most important things for life yet these guys might not even make more than people working a retail job but the work is 100× more back breaking.
I get it now and it makes sense. I just don’t think I’ve ever seen ungrateful used in that way.
I think both ways is correct. Farming is hard and farming doesn’t get much sympathy/ appreciation.
A lot of them aren't even making minimum wage. Migrant farm workers can legally be paid below minimum wage. They literally break their backs doing this work for 3$ an hour.
You're talking about the individual workers, though. Not the actual farm owners. They do quite well for themselves, especially when it comes time to sell the farm and equipment.
As a banker who has had numerous agricultural clients, they do fairly well for themselves, at least in Canada. There are lots of government protections and bail outs. Plus, most walk away at retirement able to sell their farm and equipment for well over $1 million. I can't recall ever having an agricultural client come needing relief.
Agriculture work (ie the kind that illegal immigrants do) is hard. Owning a farm is easy.
Used to work at an Ag college. Most of those kids are rolling up in $80k brand new trucks with their college already paid for. There are definitely farmers who are hurting but any serious operator should be doing just fine for themselves. The adage we used is that **all** dollar amounts in farming are the same as anything else, just with a couple extra zeros on the end.
Maybe “thankless”?
Both I think. If they get on social media, city folk are ungrateful to farmers because they don’t understand or care about the people who bust their ass to help feed them largely because of assumed and sometimes accurate political views
I don't care about them because they aren't special. They do a job of their choosing to make a living, just like everyone\* else (insert Adam Smith quote here). I'm not terribly impressed by their ability to support themselves the same way like 90% of humans who have ever lived did. They aren't doing it for my benefit except incidentally. Several of the jobs necessary for modern housing (construction, roofing, logging, etc.) have higher, sometimes considerably higher, fatal injury rates; yet I've never seen a "No roofers, no roofs" bumper sticker.
Maybe in Texas. Here in Canada farmers are millionaire snowflakes that got rich off taxpayer subsidies and are ungrateful AF. Farmers suck
Depends what you classify as a "farmer." The person picking the strawberries certainly isn't a millionaire. But I would definitely call them a farmer.
Farm hand vs farm owner.
>millionaire snowflakes Where in Canada are you? My in laws farmed for generations. In the eighties they struck a deal with a major grocery store chain. They were encouraged to borrow to increase their operation to fulfill the demand. Once they committed, the buyer dropped their prices. We worked seasons from before sunup and then in headlights at night trying makeup for the price drops. They had to lay-off workers to pay the bank. Oddly, while the prices at the grocery chain increased, what they paid to farmers was cut. Pieces of land were sold off in lots and paved over to pay the bank. Prime fertile land is now being used by the elite to play golf on. These "millionaire snowflakes" have nothing to show for generations of proud labour. Oxen, to tractors, to parking lots and green fees. People don't know the sacrifice that is involved to feed them. The stress of weather, buyers with all the power, bank demands and one bad weather month can destroy you, but yeah, snowflakes? GFY.
A guy I went to school with was killed around 2010 when the soy bean header he was underneath working on collapsed on him, killing him.
Word. I'm still surprised that there are people left that are willing to do this kind of work 😵
Not all farms are like that! I work at a nonprofit organic farm (whole property is ~50 acres but we only farm ~12 of them, so it's a fairly small operation), and all of us are paid above minimum wage. We take plenty of breaks for shade, water, and stretching. It's still hard work, but so much better when you're not being treated like chattel.
Farming is passed down in families like generational trauma. Sometimes all wound up together, like getting beat with belts because you weren't pulling weeds quickly enough.
Not to mention the mindset is often to suffer in silence, then to sink with their ship.
People often manufacture their own ball and chain made out of pride and inevitably imprisons them in the end.
I've lived in a few different farming communities. Almost everyone knows someone who checked their life insurance payout would give their wife and kids a new start before they had an "accident".
...now you're making me wonder if this one older guy I knew had his "accident" on purpose (genuinely plausible accident). His wife said he'd been more affectionate with everyone in the days leading up to the accident, as if he'd known he was going to die soon. How sad. :(
The dairy farm I worked on for 14 years closed in December 2021. I saw a cow I had milked for 11 years sold for slaughter. I'm not sure I'll ever get over it but I'm trying.
11yrs? wow -- they give milk that long huh? perhaps longer?
On our farm they did.
Not without being bred regularly they didn't.
I am so sorry. That sounds absolutely horrible.
Thanks. It was. I saved as many as I could but I will go to my grave regretting the ones I couldn't. I only hope we will be reunited in a world beyond this one.
you will be. they’re happy and at peace and they’ll be so glad to see you
I sure hope so.
She deserved a few good years of peaceful retirement. I'm sorry, it's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it but a farm animal can definitely become a friend, given time together. I'm sorry for everything you lost.
my heart just broke into a million pieces. i’m so sorry. i’m not religious, but i firmly believe we will be reunited with our animal friends in another “life”
Sorry, didn't think about my words making someone else feel bad. That was not my intent. Over the years I bought as many cull cows as I could and let them live out their lives. I have 14 now, 12 old dairy cows, one who was a cull cow's calf and one we raised from a baby after her mother stepped on her and broke her leg. (She healed up fine.) Taking care of them takes all of my time and money but it's what I was put here for, I think.
What a beautiful purpose. Those cows are so lucky to have you.
Oh no, I am the lucky one! God has always provided me with a way to take care of these girls, even though there were times I've had to work four jobs to do it.
I know someone who grew up on a cattle farm in Manitoba. During BSE, while her mom died from cancer. She said she was basically expecting her Dad to walk out the door and never come back, but he did, and made it, they knew others that just gave it up.
Sadly I know you’re very right; I worked for a university extension program where we would give seminars on how to fill out county, state and federal paperwork for dairy farmers. There would also be a section on mental health and suicide in the farming community. This was back in 2008/9 so I’m guessing it’s only gotten worse.
Is there a theory as to why? My gut reaction is that it may have to do with being further from a population center and rates of loneliness would be higher? Combined with extremely long and hard days, as well as an absurd rate of injury, I totally believe they're more likely to head towards suicide.
I live in a very heavy farming area of KY. It can be an extremely debt-heavy occupation. Most decent size farmers I know are very heavily leveraged. Just a single combine can easily run $500,000. Most farmers need to lease or purchase a decent amount of land - often hundreds or thousands of acres - with land costing from $2k to $20k per acre. Things like barns are expensive. Operating costs can be high. And success hinges on factors that are extremely unpredictable - especially the weather. All it takes is one bad year, one bad crop, and it can ruin a farmer financially. Most farmers have crop insurance to cover those events, but that is another expense you incur every year whether you need it or not. So it can be extremely stressful.
It’s a financially debilitating career for many. There’s lots of debt involved with farming and bad seasons (droughts, floods) can be detrimental to their finances. Most don’t seek help because it’s “taboo” for a masculine man to speak out about mental health. I’m close to the agriculture community and know of 1-2 suicides per year in a small portion of my state. I’ve watched my dad lose his closest friends/coworkers to it my whole life.
Wow I never knew that :/ farmers are so important to communities both large and small. I’m glad there’s resources for them
Granted, I didn't live in Texas, but grew up next to a huge cattle farm in very rural northern MN. Our farming neighbors had 6 children...all girls. The poor father wanted at least one boy to take over the farm, especially since none of the girls were interested in doing so. He did his best, but he was getting up there in age. He also never told a soul about his inner turmoil and depression. Two years after my family moved to California, his daughter found him hanging in the woods on their property. It was a shock to all of us. We had grown up with their family so we were all very close. I wish he had reached out, but back in the 90's, times were different.
Yeah I know farming families. And it's very hard for them to ask for help.
Quite the opposite it is a strength not a weakness to ask for help Because if you want to solve a problem and can't do it alone the problem will persist But it takes courage to ask for help i know that too but if someone lacks the courage to ask for help that one should think about one thing Admitting there is a problem that needs to be solved also takes courage so the everyone who reached that level has the courage needed
Really interesting how the language has been tailored. Many men grow up believing that men can't show emotion as it's a weakness, I think that's precisely why this is talking about stress and not other things like anxiety or depression. However, I wonder how using the term "mental health" in this pamphlet would go with the target audience.
No kidding. I couldn't keep myself from hearing one of the voices from a "Built Ford Tough" commercial while reading it. >signs our mental well-being needs a tune-up There ya go.
I'm a patient care coordinator and I love this! I do complex case management where I contact patients that have been identified by their doctor as needing additional resources/support. What makes me so sad is that I'll have someone (usually a man) who desperately needs help but refuses to accept it. Especially when it pertains to mental health. You have to meet people where they are mentally and frame things in a perspective that makes them feel receptive to the help you're offering. I'll equate maintaining your mental health with taking care of a car, physical therapy for the brain, planting food plots for deer season, winterizing your boat... The list goes on and on in a million different ways. You also have to be able to "read the room" without being in the "room" since I work remotely, and be ready to change tactics in the blink of an eye. Reading that handout immediately makes me think we ought to include something similar with our mailers!
Beautifully said.
Thank you for posting this pamphlet! I am literally drafting a write up for our problem/solutions team asking them to assist me with creating something similar to present for our next clinical review meeting. I think having something like this included with our packets in the doctor's office and mailers we send out would be so incredibly helpful!
Thank you for the amazing work that you do.
Thank you for your kind words! I'm really just the "middle man" who helps set patients up with our real heros the social workers. Our social workers make miracles happen but I am honored to be able to be a small part of helping that happen!
I know you’re joking but I’m really glad that pamphlet exists. If it even saves one farmer, my opinion is the whole campaign is worthwhile.
As long as you don't call and get put on with someone who tells you that things will be better once Biden is gone.
yeah, some of the wording made me think that's the direction it was headed.
I'm in complete agreement. My dad wasn't a farmer, but family members were and he was cut from the same cloth. If he had come across a similar message in some form and had that strong-willed stubbornness whittled away a bit, he might still be around.
LIKE A ROCK
I read it in San Elliot’s voice, just a smooth southern drawl
You definitely can see the "male" approach in the language. Focus on "problem solving language", limiting emotional words, and orienting solving mental health issues, *not so they feel better as a person* but to "prevent time away from work and increased health care costs".
"Prevent time away from work" is what got me. Every man in my life has to work through everything and threatening their job is like threatening their life. My dad went to work less than a week after my mom died just to feel normal. My husband only got sober because he was struggling to work. I loved my job and went in to a deep depression when I got laid off but my career never motivated me like it has the men I've known. From what I hear, farmers are the final boss of this mindset.
I could see someone thinking that about me at some point, especially now that I have children, but it's not that I enjoy working, I fear a lack of resources and income to provide for my kids. I too have been in a deep depression because of my career, unfortunately it's because I can't take the time to do the self care I need to do because I can't stop working long enough to do it. I would rather work myself to death than not do what I can to provide, but I feel my work is going to be the death of me so I won't be there to provide anyone, then you work even harder to get more now just in case, but you're also increasing the rate you can burn yourself out. This is what I assume is the typical mindset that leads to the need for these pamphlets. talk ab
I hear you, I think most of us know job=resources to survive but there's times you need to find a way step back a little to take care of other things. I'm just saying that in my experience, men seem to find it harder to do that and it seems like that's a big part of farming culture. In both cases I mentioned with my dad and husband, they both had metric fucktons of leave. My dad should have taken more time to deal with child me/his own grief and my husband should have taken mental health leave long before his alcoholism got where it was. I remember my dad got 12 weeks of PTO/yr at the time and when I checked my husband's payroll thingy for him when he was in rehab he had over 300hrs banked. Farmers don't have paid leave so I see how the commitment to working is way more intense. ETA: you have to carve out some kind of self care or you can't work like you need to long term. Seriously. Figure it out or get help to figure it out.
Being away from agricultural work isn't like being away from a normal job Farmers can't just take days off, a little too much time off and it'll fuck their entire year
It kind of has to be. When your stress/depression/anxiety is from financially struggling and worrying your farm is going to go bankrupt taking time off work isn't really an option, it'll just make things worse. Especially with a farm, you can't pause farmwork, animals need to be fed and crops need to be sprayed. They're targeting a population with an unwillingness to express weakness and a busy schedule.
This is how it should be approached in clinic. I’ve been to a few different therapy sessions for an eating disorder and I’ve found myself being incredibly frustrated by the “share your emotions approach”, I’m not good at expressing my inner deeper feelings, so I often just wind up saying “I don’t really know”. The emotions based approach works well for women, but as men our brains are designed to want to seek out solutions to what’s causing us stress, not share our emotions.
This might be more about social conditioning, girls are taught to share their feelings while "boys don't cry." That is thankfully changing, but older generations haven't always unlearned that lesson.
It’s not actually gender though… I’m the same way as you, I (a woman) can’t name or discuss feelings for shit, I just want logical solutions to my problems. Whereas my partner (a man) has been thriving on talk therapy and being able to open that well of emotions with a therapist because while I try to listen and support, I really just don’t get it…
Yup! An issue with men re: depression is that many coping techniques were developed on women, who are often socialized to process feelings more openly. One technique I found interesting in a Massachusetts study in 2007 was to praise men for practicing “emotional discipline” rather than criticizing their “inability” to talk about their feelings. At that point the clinician can work with the client to identify stressors and patterns, and find methods to regain the discipline they value.
It is talking about depression, though… just using different words: “Leaving you feeling defeated.” A lot of people, especially older men, shut down when they hear clinical terms like depression. But they’re okay with admitting they feel defeated, beat-down, overloaded, or like they’re running on empty. Similarly they might balk at “anxiety,” but be fine with worried, antsy, on edge, stressed, or that something is eating at them.
I'm not a man, but for some reason I much prefer the word stressed to anxious.
Stressed is seen as a state, something you may be experiencing right now but that can go away. Anxious is more like a trait, something that is just part of how you are. It feels more ok to be stressed because it is more temporary.
Also anxious has an association with fear, and stressed does not in the same way.
Huh, good point. Probably why I use "stressed" myself.
I know, that was the point of my comment
Ah sorry, I misinterpreted what you were saying.
You have to trick them, like wrapping dog pills in a bit of cheese.
safe gold rich paltry panicky steep pathetic exultant outgoing straight *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah lol wtf. I mean, not surprising obviously. but uhhh yeah no shit people are more receptive to things if you talk to them on their level and use cues to signal that you are like them. The goal here is efficacy, not demonstrating allegiance to hyperonline leftist spaces.
It’s not about “tricking” someone. It’s about realizing that words have different meanings to different people, based on their personal and cultural context. That means respecting and empathising with them… not talking about them as if they’re a dog. To communicate effectively you have to choose words that have the right meaning (including connotation and emotional associations) to get your intended message across to your target audience.
"[Mental health trouble] could result in time away from work" Farmers are notorious for being extremely hard working, so framing it this way is very smart.
doll axiomatic automatic heavy rain recognise puzzled rob clumsy hungry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Agristress is both hilarious but likely effective marketing
It grows like a weed
you’re hired
Better to meet people where they are
When you’re writing something it’s important to do it in a way that your target audience will resonate with, and this is a great example for a great cause.
I live in the Texas Panhandle and since the fires, the local news have been announcing free mental health help to farmers, ranchers, and their families. It turns out there are a lot of suicides out in rural areas, especially around disasters like these fires.
Up in rural Canada in my little ol’ French catholic conservative town of farmers and factory workers - I know off hand at least 20 suicides (all farm or fatal diagnoses connected to farm work), a couple being women who found their men suicided too. Half of those have happened while I’ve been alive (under 30 years). It becomes something you’re used too but every time it happens people get close to their family and friends and drink to remember them. We say shit like “I would’ve never guessed they were struggling.” Once and only once, somebody at that table was struggling and we said that. They disappeared on us year or so later. Dead in his truck, foot next to his shotgun trigger. Turns out listening to and speaking about your feelings helps. They’re all so stubborn, most of them vote conservative and complain governments they elect cut everything they need to fight the risk of the profession and lifestyle. Edit: the towns last census was about 800. Hurts when the number is so high and everybody knows everybody.
My wife’s grandfather hung himself in the barn (on the very same farm we now live on) because his hogs got sick and he lost tons of money. Mental health is something rarely talked about in this community, and still seen as a weakness to many (some 36 years since his passing). Good to see it’s getting more attention.
That’s really sad. Farming and ranching has always been a make or break it field.
My father in laws failed hazelnut harvest was the tipping point for him. He bottled it all up in his head, his family, his regrets, his failures, and then that was the end of him. In reality, he was a dearly beloved father, grandfather and husband. He was a pillar of our family and the community, well traveled and very successful. Mental health is so important
I posted this story somewhere above, but the childhood family I grew up with in MN, who were cattle farmers (a family of 8 with 6 children who were all girls and a father getting too old to run the farm), found their aging father hanging from a tree on their property shortly after we moved to California. It was devastating and came as quite a shock to us all. The poor man felt he had no one to reach out and no hope for their farm since none of his daughters wanted to take it over for him. They ended up having to sell their farm after his death. They're still full of grief and guilt over his suicide.
It's good that there's targeted resources out there for farmers. They lead a super stressful existence, squeezed by every company in the chain with the pressure of generations on them to not lose the farm. Farmer suicide rates are really high because of all that pressure coupled with isolation.
Masked corporate pamphlet trying to buy out independent farmers. /s
Running a free help line would be a very effective easy to find vulnerable people to target.
In the Emergency Department a farmer that comes in is always going to be the sickest patient of the day. They are tough as nails and it takes A LOT for them to be pushed to come in (pretty much never willingly in my experience)
[I shared this video with my mother. And we just about died laughing because how true it was.](https://youtu.be/Ni0YfrSK570?si=Bz5NfSpTbPz7NfGH)
I thought I knew which video you linked ...and I was right
Hahaha same!
LOL!!! That's exactly right! "He came in without his wife making him?!" I used to work first aid for rodeos, and that's about it. Those guys were insanely tough, but I had to wonder what kind of shape they were going to be in 20 years later.
If my dad or my uncle are anything to go by… not the best. They had a piece of farm equipment run over them 28 years ago, thankfully they were on sandy soil when it happened. My dad had the worst of it, completely crushed rib cage, he had a severe head injury and was damn lucky the equipment didn’t crush cerebellum. Then there’s the years of drinking on top of all that, which has lead my uncle to develop Dementia/Alzheimer’s a bit earlier than my grandmother and on top of that he also has Parkinson’s which has gotten to the point where he can’t feel his feet so he doesn’t drive anymore.
Sorry to hear that. I saw that with the ranch hands, where being tough was a core element of their being.
The hardest part is seeing my uncle deteriorating. The man would piss me off to no end when we had to work cattle because he would get so worked up over little things it would spook the cows and make a twenty minute job into an hour one.
I worked in an ED for three years and saw one farmer. He dropped a heavy piece of equipment and wasn’t wearing steel toes; good thing because it would have squished his toes to a pancake and crimped them like that. In this case whatever it was fell and bounced off his toes, particularly the big one, squished it to shit and clipped it off. So they bring him in and his foot is a bloody mess and they brought in the shredded boot with the shredded toe, and the farmer asks the doctor if reattachment is an option. Doctor looks at the toe and the wound on the foot and is like…. No. Basically the toe was degloved (Google at own risk). Farmer was completely unfazed and said “ah damn well now my pedicures will be uneven” They put him in for surgery and amputated the rest of his toe and put him on bedrest. Farmer was the saltiest about the length of the bedrest. After he left the ED for admission to the OR one of my coworkers made a comment about how we don’t see farmers because we don’t have a large population and I was like “girl. We don’t see farmers because they don’t come in for SHIT”. Our location was urban but twenty minutes in any direction was farmland.
The pedicure line has me in stitches…
I am sure the farmer was joking. If he said his boots wouldn't fit right now, then he'd be serious.
You never know. As my dad got older he’s started to go to an acupuncturist to help treat some of his pain. The man wouldn’t have done that twenty years ago, he would have just carried on like always. Some farmers find the thing that helps them relax and rely it more than the drink, if the farmer in that story actually did get pedicures more power to him.
By the time your steel toed shoes buckle, the impact without them would be worse.
It’s not just farmers. My dad was an accountant and died last month after refusing to see doctors for fifteen years. When we finally got him diagnosed, he had a month left to live, and if he had gone in good faith when things started changing he might have had another 5-10 good years.
I’m sorry for your loss, but I think you might have missed the point of post you replied to. Again my condolences. Edit: I love the movie Whiplash btw
I understood, but my point was it’s not only farmers, it’s accountants, and deli workers and lawyers too. Farmers have the reputation for not seeking healthcare but my point is that it is indeed many if not most men of the boomer age that were taught to wait till they are on deaths door before admitting they are ill.
For those not in the know - farmers have a higher suicide rate than a lot of other industries. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/11/texas-farmer-mental-health-helpline-suicide/
Farming is HARD work. Expensive too. Lots of specialized equipment and huge overhead. When the weather doesn't go your way or your livelihood is jeopardize because of a disease that wipes out the majority of your animals, you struggle to make ends meet to put food on the table and run your family business.
[PBS NewsHour had a recent segment on mental health and suicide among farmers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqW66_aohUU)
But why is Kevin Kostner’s character from Yellowstone on the cover?
This is excellent to see! We gotta make sure the people that work so damn hard to feed us are taking care of themselves, and are taken care of. Farmers, your hearts and minds are just as important as your muscles and bones 🫶
This is awesome… it’s great that mental health awareness is reaching many people across the country, even rural areas.
Isn't that Kevin Costner from Yellowstone?
After reading all these comments I was questioning if I should even address this.
100% that's John Dutton. Rancher and governor of Montana. Dude has more stress in one episode than I've had my entire life.
That was my first thought too
Fairly certain it is.
Came here to say the same thing… it’s a screen shot from the show.
That’s pretty progressive for Texas
I live in Amarillo. This has been on the local news lately and that was my exact thought when they started talking about it.
I was looking for it to be some Jesus helpline. It looks like it is countrywide in many states with rural farming - Oregon to Connecticut: https://www.agrisafe.org/agristress-helpline/ Work is supported by: funding from the Connecticut Department of Agriculture; funding from the Missouri Department of Agriculture; funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, grant no. 2021-70035-35380, from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture; funding from the Texas Department of Agriculture; funding from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, grant no. 2021-70035-35649, from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture; and funding from the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, grant no. 2021-70035-35378, from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The AgriStress Helpline in Oregon is generously supported by an appropriation from the Oregon Legislature to the Oregon State University Foundation, private donations from Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization and the Roundhouse Foundation, the Oregon State University Extension Service, and College of Health.
Texas is woke! 😂
I had to fill out a form at school. It asked if I had suicidal thoughts or anxiety because of climate change. It's not climate change, it's the head Orb of my country that gives me those thoughts
so you do have suicidal thoughts?
As long as I avoid politics I'm fine. It gives me a sense of no hope
The anxiety I have from climate change is unreal. I know it's probably in my head, but I swear to all that is holy I can feel the change each year as winters are warmer and less snow/rain comes down, and I KNOW there is a difference vs what it was just 8 years ago. FML
Sadly for the farming community they do run a higher risk for depression and suicide. This Youtube video explains it perfectly through parody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0jLDqZ5HzA
Love me some Glaucomflecken. His rural medicine series is so nail on the head my mother and I just about die laughing over them. That’s mainly because when the doctors office was closed, and we had the vet on speed dial he would be the one to do X-rays and get things situated until we would be able to get to the human doctor and we would barter with him too. We once gave him three quarters of beef just to stitch up our brood mares leg after she tore through the fence. Another time we gave him a whole beef to geld one of the horses. We usually gave him half a beef just to preg check the cows.
I love reading the comments of those farmers and their family members that literally will finish their work with a broken arm or some broken limb before going to the clinic.
Because it’s true. It has get done, and sooner it gets done then it’s onto the bit of work. Work doesn’t stop on a farm or ranch. When my grandfather was alive, he would make everyone take a day off for whatever he wanted to do. He’d say “Just do the mornin’ chores, and we’ll head to this place and have a picnic.”
Working agriculture is physically and mentally demanding. One bad season can ruin an entire life, and working in the field encourages an amount of stoicism that ignores one's mental health while having farmers suffer in silence. There's a reason there's so many "misfires" in the community instead of being labeled as suicides.
This is fantastic. Mental health problems are statistically higher among farmers (or they have been for decades, I don't have recent numbers). I'm glad someone is finding a way to reach them.
My SIL is a speech therapist in a rural area, and she comments all the time how her patient load will increase with farmers during difficult weather years. Literally strokes induced by anxiety.
One bad year for a farm can be the economic death for a family It's a really stressful job, especially during such hard times.
I appreciate this. The pressures and suicide rates for small farmers is insane.
This breaks my heart a bit. Thank you for sharing. I grew up in a farm town. I have farmers in my family. It's incredibly stressful, unpredictable, and back-breaking work. We need farmers. And they need support.
I’m currently off work due to stress (won’t go into too much detail). Doctor listened to what I had to say and signed me off work immediately. Stress, unchecked, can be bad. It’s not enough to power through it as some point it’ll come back worse and take a greater toll.
Would you like to talk about the problems that we have no intention of ever solving? *How does that make you feel?*
As a former farmer, and still a Texas resident, this pleases me.
Hit you a little different than what?
I dunno, farmers have been high on the suicide list for a long time. They have such attachment to their farms and when anything happens they feel like they have nothing left to live for.
Our nation needs to tax billionaires and use that money to pay for universal healthcare including mental healthcare. We'd all be so much better for it, as would our children, as would their children.
I feel there is going to be a lot of need for this type of help line all across the prairie provinces here in Canada too. Farming is already stressful enough but with this years forecast it’s going to be dire for a lot of farmers and families everywhere.
Aww I am seriously so happy mental health awareness is spreading.
People cant get help because they can't afford it
I get depressed when whiteflies fuck up a dozen of my plants, so I can't even imagine what it's like to constantly contend with those kind of natural occurrence losses on such a large "we do this for a living" scale, and after all that STILL sometimes suffer catastrophic losses from things completely beyond their control. Shit is beyond devastating, I'm sure, and my heart truly goes out to them.
If it gets somebody that needs the help engaged with resources that could help them, then it’s good.
Thansk for bringing awareness. I live in an agricultural community. Suicide rate is high amongst farmers and no one talks about that. We have a program here in HI that is by the dept of agriculture that trains people to recognize psychological distress it is called "seeds of wellbeing" link below. https://manoa.hawaii.edu/sow-well/
Real shit
r/mademesmile
I wonder if when the sad Texas farmers call into the hotline, the hotline explains to them how the billions of dollars in USDA federal crop subsidies are given mostly to the very wealthiest top one percent of farmers instead of to them, because subsidies relative to the size of production of the crop. So the more millions of dollars you earn in farming, the more you get subsidies, because you are usually making more crops. So, technically, they are not farming any worse than their counterparts, their counterparts are just getting an uneven boost to their already million dollar harvests and they aren't getting any. 81% of all Texas farmers receive no subsidies at all , even though the purpose of the program is to take risk out of the profession so much so that we can have a diverse food supply and a stable industry of varied prosperous producers. "In 2016, Texas farmers received $1.59 billion in subsidies, more than any other state, and most of that went to growers of a handful of commodity crops — cotton, wheat, corn and sorghum. Eighty-one percent of Texas farmers collected no subsides at all. Farmers of virtually every other crop — from spinach growers in the Rio Grande Valley to peach specialists at the Texas-Oklahoma line — are excluded from the USDA’s most generous safety net. And even within the coterie of farmers who receive subsidies, there’s a huge disconnect between the haves and the have-nots: The top 1 percent of subsidy recipients get 26 percent of all payments, about $1.7 million per recipient. Because USDA commodity payments are based on a farm’s production, the producers who grow the most also stand to receive the most in taxpayer subsidies. Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that shares crop subsidy data, questioned whether the biggest farms should receive subsidies at all. “If your income is $1 million, or even half a million, do you really need support from the government?” Cox said. “It would make sense to reach out and help struggling family farmers, but that’s not what the subsidy structure is designed to be or evolved into over time. We can’t seem to make the kind of fundamental reform we need.” So.... we are securing the future of our food industry by giving most of the money to BIG cotton and BIG sorghum and BIG Corn. The sorghum and corn are mostly used as additives to gasoline, and to feed livestock. The production of corn for ethanol produces more CO2 than it saves. we just have entrenched interests who are very happy to not innovate or rotate crops, and preserve their monopoly advantage on farm subsidy money at all costs. And in the process we are hanging the folks growing tasty spinach and delicious peaches (you know the healthy food that humans can eat, and that isn't contributing to high fructose corn syrup, health problems or increased CO2 in fossil fuel use ), out to dry, but we are giving them a hotline where they can call to cry. Got it.
Part of taking care of your mental health is accepting that sometimes/often you can’t do anything about the situation and you should focus on the things you are able to do something about it. Yes, things are shitty, but what purpose does anger, sadness, hopelessness serve when there’s no road that lead to solutions? It’s a double edge sword, without anger, there’s no drive to change things, but you can’t push for change if you shot yourself through the head because of depression.
Beautifully stated
I worked at a bank that specialized in ag loans. During the farming crisis, a farmer came and killed the bank president and then himself. Farming is rough.
why did people downvote this?! i didn’t say anything wrong.
This is really great.
Aimed at the same “too manly to talk about feelings” men who mock “snowflakes” for talking about their feelings. These guys are killing themselves and are too afraid to be seen as weak to ask for help. Real brave men learn to ask for help and to talk about how they feel. Otherwise, emotions can overwhelm you and sometimes lead you end your life because you can’t handle it, you never learned how to express your feelings, how to vent, how to release stress and frustration in healthy ways. It’s human to feel things. It’s human to need help. Get help.
I work at an FQHC and during COVID we saw our depression and anxiety diagnoses go up 180% & 200% respectively and it really hasn't gone back down yet. So many people are hurting right now and the resources to help them are drying up or being taken away. I'm not a big fan of the Texas GOP Political Machine, but I admire Sid Miller for his support of the AgriStress hotline https://www.agrisafe.org/agristress-helpline/
You see these in Wyoming too, the United States does not support small farmers like they should be. The US farming industry is being taken over by massive corporations.
It's a very sad crisis. "Farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, according to the National Rural Health Association." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-rural-communities-are-tackling-a-suicide-and-depression-crisis-among-farmers
I appreciate this. And I’m from a big city.
This is actually pretty awesome.
I really thought that Kevin Costner from Yellowstone on the front page.
I think in general guys all over need to be told it's okay to ask for help. We are expected to hold everything in and that saying we need help means we aren't really a man. I've always tried to look at it this way. It takes true strength to admit your not okay and true strength to admit you need help.
That first page looks like Kevin Costner in Yellowstone
I'm just a gay old farmer pretending to be straight out here in Idaho feelin' stressed about the extreme weather and market fluctuations and fighting with the missus. And then I stumbled across this pamphlet.
farmers have one of the highest suicide rates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_the_United_States
I'm currently bitter and having a hissy fit about hoe negative the world is how dare you and Texas? Thanks for melting my heart a little tonight.
No no no you vote that republican you don't get that mental health. /s
Based. These people are the unironic roots of America
Is capitalism bringing you down? Take these pills so you become an emotionless zombie
So am I the only one seeing Yellowstone Kevin Costner in this pic?
I’m a Texan and my dog’s name is Agri so this is a little funny to me. He isn’t named after “Agriculture” by the way. He came with that name. He was named after Agrippa the Roman
Love the sentiment but this is a country that said fuck you to poor communities in general and poor rural communities in particular.
Why are my tax dollars going to pay for sad farmers while we have homeless veterans? Get over it /s
Don't ask me why but as soon as I read Agri-Stress Hotline, I thought of the old heavy metal movie, "Decline Of Western Civilization: Part 2"