The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explain mental health as “our emotional, psychological and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, interact with others, and make healthy choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence to adulthood.
The definition is quite straight forward and rather simple although it is a topic that we tend to back away from when we hear the words. As a society, we tend to ignore that mental health issues are normal and that each of us is affected at some point in our lives.
Over the past few years, I have been part of so many conversations about mental health. I participated in community forums, attended keynote speeches, met local mental health professionals, sat around a table with a local farmer who shared his story, discussed the impact of mental health on agriculture, and I’ve been through QPR training (training for someone to be able to recognize a crisis and the warning signs that someone is contemplating suicide) and I admit that the subject still puts me a bit uncomfortable talking about it.
That’s why I keep engaging and pushing myself to tell others about it, and maybe the hardest part of all, admitting that I was personally struggling.
A few years ago, through a work-related professional development opportunity, I took the Clifton Strengths Assessment. The assessment is designed to help people understand their strengths and behaviors. The assessment is designed to help you develop strategies to meet and exceed the demands of our daily lives, careers and families. It’s probably no surprise to those of you who know me that my top five strengths (ranked by most dominant) are: Performer, Communicator, Futurist, Strategic, and Maximizer. To sum up the long descriptions, I am someone who has a constant need for achievement, who wants to inspire the world and who is constantly fascinated by the “and if” of the future and anything less than excellence on my part is not gratifying. Basically, I have to be busy and productive all the time, and I never stop thinking about how I can make something better, whether it’s an event, my house, or even myself.
Unfortunately, this strength of accomplishment is not always a good thing. For the past few years, this need to always be busy and to have a mind that tells me I need to be productive all the time has left me feeling incredibly stressed, exhausted, exhausted, and lacking in self-care. After COVID-19 and the joy I felt of not having long days at work and late night meetings separating me from my family and our small farm, my children and my husband at home and the carrying out many household projects, I found it difficult to resume a normal life.
Finally, four months ago, I decided I had to do something about it. I met my doctor and told him how I felt. No matter how much I have shared with others the struggles of mental health in agriculture and rural areas, no matter how much I strive to learn how I can help, in that moment I have realized that I felt like something was wrong with me.
Both my husband and my mother reiterated that this stage of life is difficult with work and young children and that it was a good first step to taking control of things. I fail most of the time, but what I’ve learned is that two steps in the right direction (even when you wanted 100 that day) is double what I had before I started this journey.
Sharing this story was not an easy task. One thing I’ve learned is that sharing your story can make a difference for you and for others.
Suicide and mental illness are steadily increasing in agriculture. Farmers are proud, strong and resilient. Like me, they do what they do every day because it’s their passion and they can’t imagine doing things differently, and being a farmer requires strength. I don’t know a farmer that I don’t consider strong.
Sharing my story in this column was not to tell you that mental health is a problem. This is to tell you that not talking about mental health is the biggest problem. We need to talk about it. The more we talk about it, the more normal it is and when things seem normal, they are easier.
It’s normal to be upset, angry and depressed. It’s normal not to want to share this with others. Feelings are private, and if you want those feelings for yourself, that’s fine too. But keeping them to yourself and bottling them will eat you up inside. Not a single farmer avoided these feelings. Farmers face droughts, frosts and floods, fires and hurricanes, death of livestock, rising input costs, labor shortages resulting in long hours and exhausted bodies. Farmers face the pressure of keeping intergenerational farms in operation and the concerns and fears of transition planning. The list of uncertainties goes on and on. But the only certainty is that “A healthy farm or ranch is nothing without a healthy you” (US Agricultural Bureau #FarmStateofMind).
Additional resources for the farming community include: www.fb.org/initiative/farm-state-of-mind; https://agri.ohio.gov/gotyourback; http://www.trumbullmhrb.org and Dial 2-1-1 (information/Referral/Suicide Hotline)
Orahood is the organizing director at the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation for Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake and Trumbull counties.