Oklahoma Farm Bureau members wrapped up the webinar portion of the Cultivating Healthy Minds series with a look at resilience in agriculture on Friday, Oct. 13.
The finale of the three-part webinar series featured Oklahoma State University’s Dr. Shannon Ferrell as he led members through an exploration of agriculture’s unique stressors and risks when it comes to mental health.
Ferrell shared some of Oklahoma’s disheartening mental health statistics, including ranking third nationally in citizens experiencing mental illness, ranking first nationally in adverse childhood experiences per person, and ranking 49th overall in mental health.
“When it comes to mental health issues, we are the bottom of the barrel,” he said.
Oklahoma’s suicide rates, depression rates and overdose rates have also increased, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The mental health crisis is not exclusive to Oklahoma, but it is often magnified in rural communities, Ferrell said.
“The rural suicide rate exceeded the urban suicide rate starting in 2009, and the gap between those two rates has been rising ever since then,” he said.
While many factors influence the prevalence of mental health issues in rural areas like isolation, older populations and overworked rural hospitals, those in agriculture face additional challenges due to their occupation.
Compared to an industry like manufacturing – where if a company does everything right, they usually get the output they expect – the agriculture industry could not be more different.
Farmers and ranchers can do everything right and still not be guaranteed a product at the end, Ferrell said.
“You might not get the calf crop,” he said. “You might not get the grain crop or whatever it is you are raising, even if you do everything right, and that is stressful.”
Stress is the root of many of the mental health problems in agriculture, Ferrell said. Factors that are out of a farmer’s control like the weather or pest invasions only add stress to an industry that already has a relatively low rate of financial return.
“In the end, the great paradox that we face in rural mental health is some of the things that are our greatest strengths might also be the sources of our greatest vulnerabilities,” he said.
One of those vulnerabilities is the mental and physical grit that farmers and ranchers must have. Agricultural producers have to be tough, independent, and often have to be experts in a number of agricultural areas to succeed, and the same approach is often taken with mental health concerns, Ferrell said.
However, the human body is not capable of processing trauma and stress alone.
“If you’ve gone through a lot of hard stuff, you need to share that,” Ferrell said. “You need to get it out and not just bottle it up.”
Though the agriculture community is great at coming together when disaster strikes, Ferrell believes the same community can be one of the worst in terms of talking about emotions and feelings. He expressed the importance of talking about mental health in the agriculture industry and letting people know they are not alone in their journeys.
Ferrell said prolonged exposure to stress creates stress overload, which then causes burnout.
“If we have too much stress for too long of a time and don’t find a way to positively process that stress, it starts to accumulate, build up, and what could have been a small problem starts to grow,” he said.
Ferrell recommended self-care as a tool to avoid burnout, comparing it to maintenance of farm implements.
“If you don’t maintain your stuff, one of two things is going to happen,” he said. “Either its performance is going to slowly degrade over time and become worthless, or it’s going to blow up on you.”
Ferrell said the same will happen to farmers and ranchers if they do not take care of themselves.
He shared with members the signs to watch out for when it comes to mental health disorders in themselves and in others, and he encouraged them to reach out to their friends and family if they notice something abnormal.
He also encouraged members to be observant in their communities and to pay attention to who is not present, noting it is easy to notice a “squeaky wheel” but harder to recognize someone who is not there.
Ferrell recommended several strategies and resources to help a friend or family member in need, from simply starting a conversation to engaging in suicide intervention.
While the agriculture community is resilient in times of physical need and disaster, Ferrell challenged Farm Bureau members to build their mental resilience, too, through increasing their awareness of stress and treating it just like any physical malady. Minor farming injuries like cuts are usually not catastrophic if addressed properly and quickly but can lead to infection or worse if ignored.
The same can be said for stress and mental health, Ferrell said.
“The whole key for all of this is for us to recognize when we’ve got mental health issues and to treat them early on and effectively to get the help we need before it gets too serious,” he said.
