Masthead for the Kansas Ag Stress Resources site at kansasagstress.org. Graphic: Kansas Department of Agriculture
Masthead for the Kansas Ag Stress Resources site at kansasagstress.org. Graphic: Kansas Department of Agriculture

By Lisa Gutierrez
28 December 2019

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (The Kansas City Star) – He fought it as long as he could. Mick Rausch didn’t know what was wrong until he finally hit a wall he could no longer climb on his own.

It was 10 years ago. His brother — younger by just a year and three days — had recently died. A late-spring frost damaged his wheat.

He was depressed. His wife knew it. He didn’t. He thought surely there was something wrong with her.

“And finally it escalated,” said the 65-year-old retired dairyman who lives in Sedgwick County west of Wichita.

One day he was out in the shed checking the drills used to sow the wheat when he lay down and fell asleep right under them, for three hours. He went back to the house and told his wife that she was right. “There’s something wrong. We need to get help,” he said.

He still gets the occasional funny look when he challenges a “taboo” among his fellow farmers and shares that he takes antidepressants. The tendency among farmers, he said, is “you just don’t like to talk about your difficulty. You put your head down and go to work and deal with it.”

Danielle and Jacob Stenger are raising their two children — Colten and Delaney — on a farm near Milford Lake outside Junction City, Kansas. Danielle is a proud ambassador for farming in the state and applauds the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s efforts to help farmers in mental health distress. Photo: Danielle Stenger
Danielle and Jacob Stenger are raising their two children — Colten and Delaney — on a farm near Milford Lake outside Junction City, Kansas. Danielle is a proud ambassador for farming in the state and applauds the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s efforts to help farmers in mental health distress. Photo: Danielle Stenger

The Kansas Department of Agriculture has decided that’s just not healthy anymore. This month the agency introduced a website to encourage stressed-out farmers and ranchers to talk.

“The increase in suicide rates among farmers and ranchers is alarming,” Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said in a statement announcing the new website. “We must do everything in our power to curb this trend” and “provide our farmers and ranchers alternatives to suicide.”

KansasAgStress.org leads farmers to local and national sources of help, including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 800-273-8255 (TALK). […]

The new Kansas website offers support for all the members of a farm family, from “teens to aging adults,” with specific attention paid to veterans who are farming and bringing to the field their own unique set of mental health needs.

Stress is inherent in living off the land. Weather is Public Enemy No. 1. In recent years, though, market uncertainties, natural disasters and ongoing trade wars have created crushing mental stress, state agriculture officials say. [“Natural disasters” should be “climate disasters”. FIFY –Des] The toll on the farm is just as ugly as in the cities and suburbs: anxiety, substance abuse, broken marriages, emotional distress. [more]

Kansas farmers die by suicide at an ‘alarming’ rate. State steps in to help them cope