AgWellness Episode 1: Introduction to AgWellness Transcript

Josh Dallin 0:13
Hello and welcome to the AgWellness podcast. We are your hosts Josh Dallin and Jake Hadfield. This new podcast series will explore stories about farmers and ranchers and the impact of stress, mental health and other issues. This podcast series is part of a nationwide initiative, and Utah is part of the Western Regional team. You can find out more about our work by visiting our website at farmstress.us

Jake Hadfield 0:41
To meet our goal to help decrease stress amongst farmers / agricultural workers, we've developed two courses that help with well being. The first course is the mental health awareness and advocacy course. The purpose of this course is to increase understanding of how to identify mental health issues, how to locate resources for mental health issues, and how to respond to mental health issues effectively. A member of our team has been teaching this course in a university setting for several years and has received a lot of positive feedback from students for whom the course has had a positive impact in their life or given them the tools to help others they are close to. We aim to teach this course to individuals in the farming and ranching community in Utah to better equip folks to deal with mental health issues in their communities.

Josh Dallin 1:31
The other online course we're teaching is a self directed course aimed to provide people with tools and knowledge to better manage their own stress and other difficult thoughts or feelings. This course uses principles from acceptance and commitment training. This type of therapy through many trials, is highly effective in helping people manage stress, and other difficult thoughts and feelings that come up in life. This course emphasizes how all thoughts and feelings, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, can be a part of a meaningful life. The course helps people get unstuck from difficult events, so that they can feel better equipped to make value based actions towards a life they find meaningful.

Jake Hadfield 2:16
These are just some of the activities we will be completing to support our farming and ranching community in Utah and the West. Please enjoy this first podcast and subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episodes.

Hello, everyone. I'm Jake Hadfield.

Josh Dallin 2:35
And I'm Josh Dallin. And we're from USU. Extension.

Jake Hadfield 2:38
And today we wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about agricultural mental health. So this podcast is actually going to be a part of a series where we're going to talk about different aspects of mental health, interview some different people who have experienced different sides of it. But also, it's going to be an opportunity to be able to help us provide resources and help provide a little bit more information. But today, we actually wanted to focus on the why why we're talking about mental health, especially in agriculture, because it's really become a need, whether or not we want to admit it, it has become a need. And it's something that is starting to become more prevalent in the agricultural field. And so with that, one of the things we first want to start talking about is here with Josh, up here in Box Elder County, we kind of want to talk a little bit about where this started and how this started. So Josh, why don't you take that away?

Josh Dallin 3:31
Thanks, Jake. So one of the things that's interesting about our jobs as extension faculty is we get the opportunity to interact and help with a lot of agricultural producers. And this covers a wide array of Ag production, from ranching, to farming, and everything in between. And oftentimes, we get the opportunity to meet with these producers in different meetings or different various settings. And it wasn't that long ago that in a meeting, when I asked at the end, is there anything else that extension can do for you? Is there something that we can provide? One of the producers who happens to be one of the predominant cattle producers in our county said, "We really need some mental health resources." He said, "I'm worried about my friends, I'm worried about people in my community, what are some things that we have that are focused to help our agricultural people?" and I didn't have the right answers for him at the time I said, I'm going to have to go and figure that out. I'm going to have to go and look for for those resources and though we did have minimal resources, I began to dig and find that, that we really didn't have things that were focused for our people that are in our rural areas and settings to be able to tap into and to help them and so we comprised a team to try and tackle this type of a of an issue. And I want to acknowledge that team, some of our colleagues, Tasha Howard, Paige Ray and Callie Ward, who are great colleagues throughout the state that came together that have a lot more education and focus on these mental health type situations.

But what we did is we just started from ground zero. And we said, we're going to put together training, and we're going to offer that out in Snowville, Utah. And for those of you listening, if you don't know where Snowville is, you can look it up. And it's, it's a ways away from anything, but it's a great place. And it's kind of a central place for our rural parts of our county. And this training that we put together was a two day training. It was four hours each day. And it was called the Mental Health First Aid training, a great training that talks about signs and symptoms of anything from stress to anxiety, mental health as a whole, and then suicide and suicide prevention, indicators of suicide, all sorts of things. And we had a lot of people that came that were very interested in this program, more so probably people from industry standpoint. So we had our local agronomy company that sent a lot of their employees, we had a lot of emergency first aid responders that came, we had an agricultural lending company that came and we were really glad that they all came because I think that they could see the value of a training like this.

But what was really interesting about all that, is that throughout this whole training, I guess, for me, I kind of was sitting there and I participated. But I, I guess in the back of my mind, I thought, well, this is really nice, but I don't think I'm ever going to have to use this information. Why? Why would I need this everything's hunky dory in my life, I don't think I'm going to ever need it but I'll participate. And the information was good. And I felt like I had learned some things. And you know, this is this is this is kind of where, I guess two weeks later in my life, things really changed. And they really got different. And I think it's important that I note as we talk about this together that that I have permission to share this story. But I remember two weeks after this training, thinking, Well, I hope that helped everybody. And I hope that everybody that came, you know, got the resources that they needed. I happened to be visiting my mom and dad and happened to be sitting in my my parents' front room and my brother came in and he started to talk to me. And at that point, my little brother, who I love, who is very successful and has a lot of great things going for him sat there across the room. And he started to explain to me that he was suicidal, that he didn't want to live anymore that he had contemplated taking his life. And little did I know that all of the things that I had learned at that time, from that Mental Health First Aid training, were going to come into play and they were coming quick.

All of the things that they had talked to us about that we needed to respond with or questions we needed to ask. They all were readily available to me and and I'll tell you what, the thing that was interesting is my dad ended up coming in and my dad's a wonderful person, and he wants to help but not having that training and not understanding maybe a little bit deeper level that I understood things too, that he kind of was coming up with the wrong questions and the wrong responses and the things that that I don't think my little brother really needed at that time. And only, you know, this started a movement. I mean, for me personally, just because it hits so close to home. And I thought to myself, you know, in our rural communities, if your brother is one of those people that you had no idea about, then all of a sudden can be that way how many other people's brothers and sisters and moms and dads are struggling with this type of stuff?

And, you know, I I think that the stigma that surrounds this mental health thing is something that we need to break down. You know, my little brother, turns out had been suffering for years, and, you know, had thought something was wrong with him and didn't want to admit things and was going to certain doctors and trying to get help. And we later found out especially with the resources that we were able to gather, that he just wasn't getting the right kind of help. And because he wasn't vocalizing that he had a problem and then he needed that help, we weren't getting him into the right spot, you know, and fast forward now. And it's been probably well over a year, we were able to get him into the right type of a doctor that was able to diagnose that it turns out that he had a traumatic brain injury at some point, they don't know if it was from football, they don't know what it what had happened. But there was something physical that was actually causing all of those issues that he was having. And he was able to be put on the right type of treatment. And he's doing wonderful now. And in fact, he's almost an ambassador now to try and break that stigma, saying, Listen, if there's something wrong, go, go get it fixed. You know, you don't need to live that way. You don't need to have those types of ailments that are constantly on you. You know, we use I guess the the example that if you had a tractor back over your foot and bust it, you'd definitely be going to the doctor, without a doubt, you'd immediately go, you'd wear a boot, you'd wear a cast, you do whatever you need to do to fix that. But for whatever reason, a lot of people don't think the same way when it comes to that mental health. And so I guess, you know, all of this in a whirlwind is happening as we're trying to provide this type of service and help. And after we came out of these, this training in this thing happened to me personally, and we had a lot of other people start sharing their own personal stories, as we talked about this, we realized really quickly, that we needed to come up with a way that we could provide the help mates, the tools, the recognition, and the resources to help producers, and help our agricultural communities and our rural communities, whether it be somebody that's young, or somebody that's old, whomever might be struggling to recognize those things. And, and not only for themselves, but for others, because oftentimes, we might not necessarily notice that maybe we we need that help, and somebody else might. And so we pulled this team together to try and create something that was short, but yet, very, very in depth. Taking an eight hour course, like we talked about for that Mental Health First Aid trading down to about an hour. And that's where we brought in Tasha, Paige, Callie, Jake and myself to try and originate something that would work. And we think it's been really rather successful. And I think I want to turn the time back over to Jake now to talk a little bit about what that looks like, and how we've been able to utilize it throughout the state and how we're continually trying to build upon that.

Jake Hadfield 13:31
So and that's one of the biggest things overall, Josh had it just perfectly on the head, where we are sitting. And we're able to go through that eight hour training where we did four hours, over two days. But if you think about it, with our most of the producers throughout the state, if you really are wondering about their time, they don't really have the time to go through that eight hour training. And that eight hour training is great. It's really good. It taught me a lot. And like Josh said, it taught him everything, you know, that has helped him and his family, and whatnot. But instead, what we decided to do is we really condensed this down, we wanted to make it so it was really accessible. And one of the things that we really wanted to strive to do is to be able to provide this with other events, other events, such as our extension crop schools, or events such as pesticide applicator trainings. And luckily, I mean, it wasn't lucky we had COVID last year. And so that really slowed up this program starting face to face. But luckily, with the virtual pesticide applicator trainings, we were able to present this as a safety credit for those pesticide applicator trainings.

And I think that's important because the Utah Department of Ag has realized how important this issue is and how big of a need it is. And it's just really been able to get started and get going at this point. Now one of the biggest things that we really push for is this is just something that needs to be talked about. brought to the open. It's not really a favorite topic of us in agriculture. I know that like, for me myself, this is a very interesting topic that's out of my comfort zone. But we have seen that there is a need for this. And that's the important part. One of the specific reasons when we were looking into, you know, why are we pushing this? Why are we doing this is 1/5 of our entire nation lives in rural areas. And those rural areas are usually hit hardest by mental health issues. And some of the reasons behind that is there's just greater isolation in those areas. You know, you're out there, I know, there's some parts in Utah that they don't even go to the store for two weeks. So who knows how long it's been since they seen another person besides family.

We also have elevated stress levels, especially here in Utah, this drought is elevating stress through the roof. And I mean, that's just one compounding factor, not to mention how agriculture is looked at, through our society, how farmers are struggling, how a lot of times their image is dragged through the mud when it's not justified, necessarily. We also just think that it's important in these rural communities, one of our goals was is if we can train one person in the rural community that makes one more person who can help. And so if anyone is ever interested in this program, please reach out to your local Extension agent, we are looking for opportunities to, you know, come present, this program usually lasts about an hour. Sometimes we even make it shorter than that. But it's a great opportunity to be able to just learn more about mental health. And it maybe, you might not be struggling with mental health, but there may be others around you that may be struggling.

Josh Dallin 16:44
You know, last night, Jake, and I had the opportunity to present this course, to rural community. And while we were there, very vulnerably, one of the attendees, let us know that he had lost his son just three months ago to suicide, and that he had come because he wanted to figure out a way to all to be able to prevent that from ever happening again in their family. And one of the things that was really interesting that he mentioned is he said, "you know, everyone here in the community, they are wanting to tell me that they love me, they're wanting to talk about it, I can tell that they want to, to do something, but they don't know how." And he said, "and it's really troubling to me, because" he says "that tells me how bad this stigma is. People don't want to talk about it." And he says, "they need to talk about it, we need to talk about it." And, you know, he brought up that example, again, that you know, mental health is something we can fix something that we can get help with something that we can work on. And and the more we talk about it, the more normal it will become. And the less problematic situations we will have down the road. But it was really, really interesting. I don't know Jake, how you feel about it, but for me to have, have somebody openly talk about that, you know, just somebody that's just recently experienced that tragedy. But yet, he is out there seeking to try and prevent that from happening to somebody else. And also to get the word out that there's hope there's help.

Jake Hadfield 18:28
Yeah. And for anyone, if it was hard for anyone to come through that training. I mean, I'd imagine it was him. But he was there actively participating in the training, because he knows what kind of issue this is and what we're dealing with. And I think it's been a long time in the making, and we really haven't talked about it. And that's what's creating this into kind of, you know, it's becoming an issue. It's becoming a conflict. I mean, there's talk, I've seen it in the news, where, in Minnesota, the dairy companies have had to send out suicide help stuff with their milk checks, because of issues they're facing. And and I think it's important that we just acknowledge agriculture right now is a hard industry to be in. It is really hard. And there are challenges that are being faced right now that have never been faced before. And so it's just something to think about with the extra stress, we have extra pressure. There's a lot to think about there with how that's affecting us overall.

Josh Dallin 19:26
You know, it's really interesting too, I came across this statistic at an event that we had the other day, that mentioned that 80% of individuals who seek out just talk therapy, so they just talk about what they're dealing with have shown positive results and change. And so I think sometimes we have it in our minds that it's going to be some big overhaul that that might include X, Y and Z. And and it may but in the reality sometimes it's just a matter of talking it out with a professional and And figuring out what is going on, you know, again, in relation to my brother, it seems like 1000 pounds was lifted off his shoulders, when that professional identified will, you're having this issue because you had a brain injury had something happened to you, you know, in this whole time him thinking that there was something that he had done or something that was affecting him that made him mutant or abnormal, or whatever it might be, just to realize, well, gosh, you know, something like that happened. And now we got to fix it, right. And that can be all across the realm. It can be chemical, it can be stress induced, it can be physical, there's all sorts of things that can cause these types of problems. But the key is acting upon them help getting the help that's needed, whether it's yourself or somebody that you love, to better their lives.

Jake Hadfield 20:55
I think with Josh, I think a lot of times one of the scary parts is, we don't know how to help and like, as a sibling, or as a parent, that can be real scary when you know, son, daughter, or even, you know, another sibling comes to you and asks you, Hey, I'm struggling with this. And with mental health, it's kinda, you know, with a broken bone, you're like, hey, let's get you to the doctor, but with mental health, it's like, I don't even know where to go with this. Now, that is one of the reasons that we are doing this podcast that we're doing this training, is we want you to know, you don't need to know all the answers. Like really, there are resources available, there are places you can go to be able to help others. And I think that's a really important part because we don't have to have all the answers, we don't need to fix it right then and there. It's just getting people to the correct places to the correct sources, that can really make a difference and really help in the end.

Josh Dallin 21:49
So Jake, you bring up a good point, where can our people go? The people that are listening to this podcast? What are some of the things that you would recommend that they do right now so that they can be ready, if they're put into that spot, I like you recommend that they attend one of these trainings that they go through and understand the signs and symptoms from the professionals that are teaching it. But in the meantime, if they come across something, where are some places they can go for help?

Jake Hadfield 22:19
Well, I think one of the first places you can look, especially if it's not a dire crisis at the moment, is looking into your regular primary care physician. A lot of times they have networks they can kind of work with to get people to mental health professionals. National Institute of Mental Health also has some fact sheets. Now those are a little harder to access. But in the need of a crisis, there's a couple of resources. And these next resources are most important. There's a Crisis Text Line where people can text to. And so what they do is they text home to 741741. This line has been used a lot more lately, because it has a lot more you know, anonymous nature, where basically people can text rather than have to talk on the phone. That can be a great line, especially in a crisis. There's also the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is 1-800-273-8255 that can be a really great help, especially if someone's struggling, they can call that line anytime 24/7, to be able to get to be able to get someone to talk to them about the issues they're dealing with. Last and I was gonna bring this one up before, just as a last resource here that's getting going. It started up but we're still working on getting everything fine tuned. But there's actually another resource called Farm Aid. And this resources is specifically designed for farmers and ranchers. The people on this line understand the problems that farmers are and ranchers are facing, so that they can talk to our agriculture producers be able to talk to them about the issues they're dealing with, and be able to help them specifically and I believe the phone number for that is one 800 and then it's Farm Aid. I don't have the number right in front of me but again, we'll try and provide that in the description. But that is another great resource we have and I would encourage you to take the time to actually put these numbers in your phone because just like Josh explained with his story, I think a lot of us are like well that's never gonna happen to me, but we really don't know and I think that's an important part to have these just in case we ever need them to help someone out.

Josh Dallin 24:34
I agree with you Jake. Having those resources you know, we know that number to 911. That's a that's an easy one to remember. But these other these other resources are a little bit longer having them in our phone so they're ready to go. You know, I am the testimonial that you never know when this might come come right in front of you and that you might be that person that's going to be able to help and get somebody in the right direction. You know, and along with that, we hope that this type of podcast allows you to understand that you're not alone. You know, if you're listening and some of these things we've talked about hits home, please take the time to reach out to those help lines, reach out to your extension agents, they can get in touch with us. And we also encourage you to continue to listen to our subsequent podcasts, as we'll be bringing in professionals and also interviewing people that have struggled with mental health and listening to their stories and how they were able to be successful in overcoming and how the struggles are real and how they, they look at things differently. And hopefully, that can that can resonate and relate. But I think that the biggest thing that all of us can do is start now to talk about things openly. And to break down these stigmas so that those that are struggling, can have the courage and feel safe and coming forth and saying I need help. Please help me.

Jake Hadfield 26:18
And that's perfect. And with that I just wanted to say on these podcasts because we'll be doing interviews, bringing people in who have experienced different, you know, issues of mental illness or different stories, different scenarios. But we'll also have a little short component, a five to 10 minute component on these podcasts, talking about improving mental health, just improving your life by being able to just try and improve your mentality in a sense. And so that's going to be another important part that will have a part of this podcast is to be able to bring, you know professionals who are going to teach you different practices that we can just incorporate into our daily life.

Josh Dallin 26:55
We hope that you guys enjoyed our podcast today and again, encourage you to look at the resources that we'll provide along with it. And we look forward to talking to you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the AgWellness podcast. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcast, visit our website at farmstress.us and connect with us on social media at AgWellness Utah. If you are experiencing stress, mental health concerns or suicidal thoughts, or if you know someone who is please contact these resources as always, if it is an emergency dial 911

Crisis lines that are available are:

FarmAid – 1-800-FARMAID (1-800-327-6243)
Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 741741
Crisis Response Network 1-800-203-CARE (2273)
SafeUT 833-372-3388 or download their app to use the chat feature

If you need help finding a mental health provider, here are some ways to get started:

Contact the person’s health insurance provider and ask about mental health professionals that are within the network.
Psychology Today Service Finder: On this website, you can search for therapists, psychiatrists, treatment centers and support groups in your area. www.psychologytoday.com/us
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Here, you can find general information about mental health services in your area.
findtreatment.samhsa.gov/
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) At this website, you can find health centers that offer more affordable options for people that do not have health insurance. findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This website can help if you have questions about insurance coverage for mental health.

Thanks for listening to the AgWellness podcast. Be well.

Transcribed by otter.ai