Farming is a uniquely stressful vocation. Farmers work long hours performing labor-intensive, repetitive and often dangerous tasks. In fact, farming is among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the U.S., according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In her previous work interviewing farmers about their experiences handling stress, many of them expressed a fear that seeking mental health care would be interpreted by fellow farmers or the companies paying them to produce that they can’t handle their operation.
“It’s much easier for them to turn inward and just consume alcohol,” she said. “And it’s also more acceptable in rural areas to do that than it is to go to a mental health care facility.”
Knowing the stigma that exists within rural farming populations about seeking care and then looking at death by suicide numbers, it really is a public health issue because there are drastic, traumatic outcomes associated with not being able to ask for that care, using alcohol to cope and then feeling hopeless
The future of farmers’ well-being—and our global food supply—depends on taking action now.
…what are the stats for all working adults? Definitely more than 1/3 of people I know consume multiple drinks a week.
And to be clear, I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing: having a single beer with dinner 3 days/week still fits this unusually low bar 🤷♂️
Wut?
The fact that only a third of farmers are having “multiple drinks a week” (hilariously vague phrasing, btw) is shockingly low to me.
I think most people in the US have at least a couple of drinks a week.
What else to you expect people to do in Nebraska
Want to stop farmers from killing themselves? LET THEM FIX THE SHIT THEY OWN!
“That amount puts farmers on par with many Americans’ drinking habits—for example, 21.7% of U.S. adults reported drinking five or more alcoholic beverages in the last month, according to the last National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, compared to 22.5% of farmers.”
A) that’s .8% higher than the national average. B) everyone in that poll, farmers included, are lying about how much they drink. 🤣
