Farmers & Ranchers Mental Health – Asking for Help

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

Agriculture as an industry has the fourth-highest suicide rate of any industry, and 60% of farmers and ranchers meet the medically accepted symptoms for depression.

Steve Bunnell is a rancher in the Weiser area and understands the culture and family dynamics of the agricultural lifestyle. He’s also a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in providing counseling for farmers and ranchers dealing with mental health challenges.

Verbatim:

I think for a lot of farmers and ranchers, the challenge they run into is, it's on my shoulders and I got to do this myself. I got to figure this out. They want to be strong. They want to be strong for their family, for the farm. And so being able to ask for help feels like, even though it's in truth, it's a strength, it feels like, It feels like almost like this weakness. Because I'm trying to seek help means I can't do it by myself. And so they struggle with that.

I'm Steve Bunnell. I'm a fourth-generational farmer. I live in Weiser, Idaho and run cattle. And I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I specialize in working with folks with agriculture, but I also see all sorts of clients. It's my own private practice, and I work solo. And it's Mellow Mountain Counseling. It's geared towards helping folks that are in agriculture and do farming and ranching themselves, just because it is nice to have someone that understands the culture and the family dynamics and the challenges that farmers face.

One of the reasons why I got into counseling is I've had family with a lot of mental health challenges and substance abuse issues. So, learning how to help other people has helped me help my family and being able to help people has been something that's brought in a lot of joy in my life.

The practice I run is all online. And so we either do video chat or we talk over the phone. What makes this really helpful is that you don't have to take a three-hour break out of your day to go get counseling. You don't even have to take a break from chores to go do counseling. You can do it over the phone or by video right there on the farm. A lot of my farmers and ranchers will be doing their chores, they'll be on the tractor working, and then And we're just here to talk, we're here to talk about some of the challenges that you're going through.

Ranching and farming isn't a, it's not just a career, it's a lifestyle. And there's a lot of pressure to keep that lifestyle going. You know, you feel this pressure of being able to keep on doing what your dad and what your grandpa did. And then there's pressure to how do we pass that on to our children and help our children with that. But also, the hours are long. there's a lot of long hours you're having to problem solve. And so many of the stressors, you don't have control over. You don't have control over whatever the grain prices are or hay prices are. You don't have control over the weather. Fuel is up. Diesel is up right now, really, and fertilizer is up right now. And so there's a lot of these stressors that farmers have that the rest of the population don't.

One thing to look for when folks are having challenges, some sort of mental health challenges, is that they will probably seem more isolated, a lot more closed off. That can be a sign that they're under a lot of stress and maybe they're having mental health challenges or whether it be with depression or anxiety. The counselor's just there to help give you ideas of what can help you with being in a good headspace.

The story I like to tell is there was this one time I was working on a bale wagon. And I was sitting, I was laying on the ground for about an hour trying to figure out how to fix this bale wagon. My dad came out in the field, he saw I was working on the field, and he came out to see what was going on. And he was standing above me and looked at the bale wagon and told me right there what the problem was. And the reason why he could do that was, A, he's had to fix that problem before, but B, he was seeing it from a different angle than I was. And so that's kind of what counseling is like. We're here because we've seen these challenges before. We've seen what's been going on, and we can see it from a different angle.

Sometimes just talking to someone, getting what's in your head out, Some people feel a little bit better just by that first session because they've been able to say their issues out loud. And once we can get it out in the open, it helps us realize that like, oh, okay, this thing that feels so big in my head, maybe there is a way to manage it. Maybe there is a way to do something.

Sometimes that first session can feel a little bit like a load's lifted off. What we find is that within two months of counseling, people are feeling a lot better about things. And, two to three months, you see a lot of signs of improvement.

One thing I always say is that the farmer is the biggest asset to the farm. And so when the farmer's physical health and their mental health is doing well, the farm is doing well. I look at counseling like is, we have all these other professionals that help us, that help support us on the farm. You have your vet, you have your insurance guy, you have your field agent, and all these professionals are there to specialize in one specific piece of the farm and give you information. And having a mental health therapist or a counselor is just like having another professional that helps that biggest asset, the farmer.