CCE, NY FarmNet helping farmers confront mental health challenges

For this episode  of Extension Out Loud I’m joined by three guests who are active in a new program focusing on mental health on the farm. Farmers faces several complicating factors that create mental health stressors – long work hours, volatile commodity prices and lack of access to mental health resources being serval of these factors. New statistics from the CDC reveal a startling truth about agricultural work, with suicide rates for farmers and other agricultural workers at 36 per 100,000, making agricultural work one of the highest ranked occupations at risk. My guests - Nicole Tommell , an agricultural business specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Kendra Janssen of Farmnet, and Becky Wiseman a clinical social worker and consultant for Farmnet explain the roots of this crisis and  the new Farmer First Aid program and its train the trainer model. Before we jump in, a quick note on the contents of this episode. Throughout our conversation we discuss depression and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. Links Episode Transcript PAUL TREADWELL: Welcome to Extension Out Loud, a podcast from Cornell Cooperative Extension. I am Paul Treadwell. And for this episode, I'm joined by three guests who are active in a new program focusing on mental health on the farm. Farmers face several complicating factors that create mental health stressors, long work hours, volatile commodity prices, and lack of access to mental health resources being several of these factors. New statistics from the CDC reveal a startling truth about agricultural work, with suicide rates for farmers and other agricultural workers at 36 per 100,000, making agricultural work one of the highest ranked occupations at risk. My guests, Nicole Tommell, an agricultural business specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Kendra Janssen of FarmNet, and Becky Wiseman, a clinical social worker and consultant for Farm Net, explain the roots of this crisis, and the new Farmer First Aid program, and it's train the trainer model. Before we jump in, a quick note on the contents of this episode. Throughout our conversation, we discussed depression and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. NICOLE TOMMELL: Hi, everyone. My name is Nicole Tommell. I am the Central New York dairy, livestock, and field crops team farm business management specialist. I'm also the team lead. And we cover eight counties, from Madison County to Saratoga County. PAUL TREADWELL: Thank you Nicole. And Kendra? KENDRA JANSSEN: Yeah. I'm Kendra Janssen with FarmNet. So I'm the office administrator here. So we are offering these mental health first aid courses for free to New York State agricultural communities. And I help organize all this, and pilot them, and get these trainers out there and ready to instruct. PAUL TREADWELL: Hey, Kendra. Just for my benefit, can you tell me a little bit about FarmNet? KENDRA JANSSEN: FarmNet is a unique program. We offer free financial and family consulting to New York State's agricultural producers. So if you're a farmer in New York State, we offer financial business analysis. We help with business transfers, succession planning. And then we also help with the stress management side of things and family side of things, communicating. So it's a unique program, as in there's two consultants that go out to the farms and to clients. And they help together. So it's not just a financial consultant going out alone, but rather it's a financial, and a family consultant, and a social worker going out and addressing the issues that the farmers are dealing with. PAUL TREADWELL: Thank you. And Becky? BECKY WISEMAN: Yes. I'm Becky Wiseman. And I have been working with FarmNet for now five years. I am an clinical social worker. I am the family side of the team that goes out. PAUL TREADWELL: We're here to talk about, this is a new program that's starting to be deployed. So who wants to introduce the program to us and tell us a little bit about what it's...