Additional resources supporting mental health are helping to recognize underlying stressors farmers face.
Ohio State University rural sociologist Shoshanah Inwood tells Brownfield there are often invisible mental health issues in agriculture aside from suicide. For example, she says her research is finding postpartum depression is common and likely higher in rural areas.
“In almost every focus group we did, there was a woman who mentioned having postpartum depression, and over half of our national sample of farmers who responded said that they knew somebody or had somebody in their family that had suffered from pre and postpartum depression,” she says.
