Editor’s Desk: A new approach to treating mental health in farm country

By Brent Cunningham

U.S. farmers die by suicide at three and a half times the national rate. Their jobs are difficult, dangerous, and precarious, at the mercy of increasingly volatile weather and the whims of markets and politics. Addressing the problem of mental health in farm country has proven difficult, in part because many farmers are loath to acknowledge it, wary of the stigma and tied to a culture of quiet coping. But also because mental health professionals are rare in those communities, and those that are there often lack the training necessary to understand the people who need their help.

In our latest piece, “Teaching mental health professionals to think like a farmer,” produced in partnership with The Guardian, reporter Dean Kuipers tells the poignant story of Kaila Anderson, a Kansas social worker who developed a new approach to training healthcare providers. One that, as Kuipers explains, 

uses farmers’ relationship to their land to identify and treat depression, anxiety, and other emotional issues within a notoriously hard-to-reach population. Operating in areas that typically don’t have enough mental health professionals, she’s trying to get family doctors, crisis hotline staffers, county health workers, pharmacists and others to recognize what it can mean when a farmer says, “I can’t afford to feed my cows,” or, “The sorghum crop just failed” — statements that are often about much more than financial stress.

Anderson’s LandLogic Model draws heavily on cognitive behavioral therapy, which attempts to identify the relationship between a person’s thoughts and behaviors, and redirect negative thought patterns to something more positive. She describes LandLogic as “a cultural adaptation of cognitive behavioral therapy designed for the agricultural community.”

In addition to the inherent stresses of farming, today’s farmers are also dealing with climate change, bird flu, and the uncertainty of the Trump administration’s tariffs and cuts to support programs. As Kuipers notes, this “situation is prime for another rash of mental health emergencies in rural America.”

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