Pennsylvania farmers are facing a mental health crisis. According to the National Rural Farmers Association, farmers are around three times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.<\/p>\n
In a public hearing on Wednesday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, lawmakers, agricultural mental health experts and advocates joined together.<\/p>\n
They discussed how the state can better support its farmers.<\/p>\n
“Up until the spring of 2022, I was a fourth generation dairy farmer milking cows on my family farm in Somerset County,” said Jeff Corle, a Somerset County Farmer and Farmer Mental Health Advocate.<\/p>\n
Corle says economic pressure forced him to shut down his family’s longstanding dairy farm, and sell their beloved cows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“When the last of the cows, my stubborn little Dolly was finally loaded onto the trailer and that trailer door slammed shut, well reality began to set in,” he said.<\/p>\n
Corle says he began to experience feelings and emotions he had never felt before.<\/p>\n
“In the days and weeks that followed the sale, I was in a word, heartbroken, and I spiraled down into a deep depression filled with a lot of pain and anxiety,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The farmer turned his pain into activism, picking up his guitar, and posting to YouTube and soon, his story went viral.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, he travels across the country performing, and connecting with hundreds of farmers who have experienced similar mental health struggles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We need a way that guys that look like me can feel okay to say they’re not okay,” Corle said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Farmers face unique challenges.<\/p>\n
The work is taxing, and they and often lack access to mental healthcare because of location and insurance barriers.<\/p>\n
The state has an “agri-stress” helpline to connect farmers and their families to resources 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the Department of Agriculture leaders hope to expand on these services to get more farmers the help they need.<\/p>\n
“Supporting farmers mental health is not separate from supporting agriculture, its an essential part of sustaining our farms, our rural communities and our food systems,” said Russell Redding, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You cannot have a healthy farm without healthy people,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania farmers are facing a mental health crisis. According to the National Rural Farmers Association, farmers are around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[61345,133217,97,259,260],"class_list":["post-407996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}