Brown: Mental illness threatens the harvest in rural Minnesota, but hope grows

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This column is part of a series of occasional columns regarding mental health in Minnesota, chronicling ongoing struggles, emerging progress and voices of hope.

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When sunsets bend southward with the geese, farmers know harvest is nigh. It is the fruit of a year’s labor, the lifeline to financial survival and relief from a burden carried row by row through a long, hot summer.

And yet, years ago, farmer Bob Worth of Lake Benton, Minn., couldn’t get out of bed to harvest his crop. He described the feeling “like there was a big heavy load on you.”

It was the 1980s, the height of the American farm crisis. The values for everything farmers own or produce collapsed. Banks withheld operating loans. Debt and despair wrested family farms from people who worked the land their whole life. Worth, a jovial man with generations of soybean and corn farming behind him, found himself unable to smile or put on his boots to work.

“That’s the best explanation that I have: You just can’t,” said Worth. “And if someone doesn’t recognize it, it could lead to suicide. It gets so bad you just give up. And agriculture suicide is the number one cause of death for farmers.”

Worth’s wife pushed him to go to the doctor. He ended up seeing a new physician’s assistant who had recently trained in mental health treatment.

“It took a couple different medications to get me out of it,” said Worth. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know what I would have done. The old doctors didn’t talk about depression. And farmers until just a few years ago never talked about it. We’re extremely private people. We don’t like to talk about ourselves.”

The same resilience that helps farmers persist through bad weather, crashing markets and hard labor often works against them when confronted with undiagnosed mental illness. Rural isolation and the uniquely uncontrollable pressures of farming can deplete health in unexpected ways. Today, global trade wars, inflation and market unrest provide new stressors.

Worth kept his treatment and recovery a secret for decades. He would go on to serve as a two-time president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and recently planted his 55th crop.

After two friends died by suicide just a few years ago, Worth decided it was time to share his story to help others. He recorded a podcast about his experience and cut public service announcements that still run on local radio stations.

Meg Moynihan and her husband run a dairy farm in Le Sueur County. She also works part time for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture coordinating the Farm Advocates program that provides administrative support and free counseling to farmers across the state. The program is the only of its kind in the country.

Moynihan’s family experience with farming showed her the importance of the program.

“Farmers feel responsible for everything,” said Moynihan. “You feel this great responsibility to your family, your soil and your legacy, and even to your animals. But at the same time there are so many factors that are completely out of our control. So many uncertainties. It can be really daunting sometimes.”

Ted Matthews began counseling farmers for the state ag department in 1993. The day we spoke, he was driving to Ortonville, Minn. Most of his work is on the road visiting farmers wherever they are.

“People always talk about how stoic farmers are,” he said. “Have you ever walked into a restaurant where it’s all farmers? It’s not stoic. It’s loud. They’re talking about what’s important to them. We need to understand that that’s exactly what they should be doing.”

Matthews said farmers face unique communication dynamics. Their spouses often work outside the farm to carry health insurance. Sons and daughters become co-workers, and later bosses. The transition from one generation to another is less certain than ever. A divorce or estranged child can financially devastate a farm.

Monica McConkey is another Farm Advocacy counselor. She grew up on a farm in northwestern Minnesota and now lives near Detroit Lakes, Minn.

“A lot of the time, people are just holding onto things,” said McConkey. “Thoughts, worries, what other people think of them. We hold those things tightly and they don’t do us any service. We try to pause a little bit and calm those emotions so we can get our thinking brain working to make a plan about how we’re going to move forward.”

Minnesota’s Farm Advocates program began in 1984 amid the farm crisis. It’s a small program with just two counselors, but has provided consistent support to farmers with broad bipartisan support from the Legislature. In addition to mental health counseling, it provides referrals for legal services, financing and technical support. But the program’s biggest impact is the lives it saves.

“People need different things,” said Moynihan. “You might not need a therapist. You might need to see a doctor, a pastor or an old friend whose advice you appreciate. There are those other informal types of resources around too.”

Rural people pride themselves on self-reliance. But we are slower to see changes in our mental health than others. That’s why self-reliance must also include culture and communication.

Once at a recent Farm Fest, another farmer approached Worth at a conference to tell him that his mental health ads saved his life. Considering suicide, the man suddenly started thinking about his grandkids and went to see a doctor.

“What do you say to that?” said Worth. “So, I never stop talking about it. Because there is nothing wrong with having depression and mental illness. What’s wrong is not getting help.”

He’s right. Listen to your family. Spend time with your faith community or supportive people. Talk to your medical provider or a therapist. If you’re facing a crisis, dial 988 for a 24/7 hotline.

“Better is better,” said Matthews. “Healthier is healthier. You can get a lot healthier or very little. There are no guarantees, but it’s worth a shot.”

Sometimes, it’s just what needs to be done to save a life and preserve families.

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Previous articles in this series include “To heal generational pain, we must recognize and ease Minnesota’s mental health crisis.”