If you suspect you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or texting HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line.
GRINNELL, Iowa — The agricultural co-op here becomes a center of hope each spring, where farmers buy seeds and fertilizer for summer crops and turn to for tips on maximizing their corn and soybean harvests.
But on a recent morning, a dozen mental health experts gathered at the Key Cooperative Agriculture Center to discuss why so many farmers are quietly suffering from untreated anxiety and depression.
The study concluded that suicide is disproportionately common among farmers, and the researchers believe this is not just because many farmers live in rural areas and have other risk factors, such as access to guns.
This tragic trend has caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is sponsoring sessions like the one at Grinnell to help health professionals learn how to talk to farmers about the pressures they face to make a living from the land.
“A lot of them are born farmers. They don’t have a choice,” family therapist David Brown explained to session participants. Brown noted that many farms have been passed down for generations, and the current owners believe that if they fail, they will disappoint their grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren.
Brown, who works for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, led the training in Grinnell. Brown said farmers’ fates depend on factors they can’t control. Will the weather be favorable? Will world events cause prices to spike or crash? Will political conflicts lead to changes in federal farm support programs? Will farmers get injured or sick and be unable to do vital work?
Brown said research shows many farmers are reluctant to seek mental health care, in part because they believe therapists and doctors cannot understand their lives.
Tina Recker, a mental health therapist from northeastern Iowa, attended the training. She has lived on a farm and has seen how the profession can become one’s entire identity. “It’s farm, farm, farm, farm,” she told the group. “If something goes wrong on the farm, it’s your whole world.”
It is difficult to estimate how much of the increased suicide risk among agricultural workers is attributable to their occupation.
One reason for the high rate could be that many farmers are middle-aged or older men, a group that typically tends to be at higher risk, “but it certainly isn’t the only problem,” said Edwin Lewis, the USDA administrator helping to oversee efforts to address the situation.
The Grinnell training session was part of a federal program called the Farm and Ranch Stress Support Network, which Lewis said spends $10 million a year to fund counseling hotlines and support groups.
Jason Haglund sees the issue from many angles. He’s a mental health advocate and a part-time farmer near the central Iowa town of Boone. He and his brother-in-law grow corn and soybeans on the 500-acre farm where Haglund grew up. His family has been farming in the area since the 1880s; his parents continued to farm despite going bankrupt during the 1980s farm crisis, and he’s happy to embrace his role as steward of their estate.
Haglund is trained as an alcohol and drug addiction counselor and co-hosts an Iowa podcast that talks about the need for improved mental health care.
He said any kind of family business can be stressful, but farmers especially have strong emotional ties to their traditions that keep many in the profession.
“Let’s be honest, farming these days isn’t necessarily a good economic decision,” he said.
Farmers have traditionally valued self-sufficiency, he said: They try to solve any problems themselves, whether their tractor breaks down or they suffer from anxiety.
“The older generation still has that attitude of, ‘Bear it and get over it,'” Haglund said. Younger generations seem more willing to talk about mental health, he said, but in rural areas, many lack access to mental health care.
Haglund said the risk of suicide among farmers is increased because many of them own guns, which give them a way to quickly respond to fatal urges.
Guns are common in rural life, he says, and are seen as useful tools for pest control. “You can’t go into a rural community and say, ‘We’re going to confiscate your guns,'” he says. But a trusted therapist or friend might suggest that a depressed person temporarily give their gun to someone who can store it safely.
Haglund said it’s not just health care workers who need to learn how to deal with mental stress: He encourages the public to consider Mental Health First Aid, a national initiative to spread knowledge about the symptoms of mental stress and how to deal with it.
A 2023 review of studies on farmer suicides in several countries, including the United States, cited cultural and economic stress as causes.
“The peasants who committed suicide, especially the men, were described as hardworking, strong, introverted people who took great pride in being the sober breadwinners for their families. They were often remembered as members of a unique, disappearing culture, little understood by outsiders,” the authors from the University of Alberta in Canada wrote.
Rebecca Park Stevenson, a psychology professor who contributed to the study, said health professionals face two challenges: persuading farmers to seek treatment for mental stress and encouraging them to stick with therapy.
At the Iowa training, instructors urged mental health professionals to be flexible with their schedules and to be understanding if farmers postpone appointments at the last minute.
An animal may get sick and need treatment, machinery may break down and need immediate repair, the weather may be perfect for planting or harvesting, and so on.
“Time is money,” says Brown, the therapist leading the training.
The session’s lessons also included what to ask and what not to ask when meeting with farmers. One thing you definitely shouldn’t do is immediately ask how much land they farm. “Asking how many acres they farm is the same as asking to see their bank account,” warned Rich Gassman, director of the Iowa Agricultural Safety and Health Center, which helped with the lesson.
A good place to start, say instructors, is to ask what’s fun about farming.
Many farmers also need to discuss emotive issues like when, how or if the next generation will take over.
Tim Christensen, an agricultural management expert at Iowa State University, said general advice on how to deal with stress can be counterproductive for farmers.
For example, he says, health care workers shouldn’t advise farmers to take a few weeks off and relax. Most farmers can’t escape their responsibilities for that long, he says. “There’s a saying on farms: ‘A good vacation goes unpunished.'”
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