 How are you guys doing today? Good. Good. These brave souls in the front, I like it. I like it. I'm a professor, so I appreciate when my students sit in the front when I instruct, but most of the time I know I'd probably be in the back, so appreciate y'all in the front. And I do pace, so I apologize, and I did give one presentation where they made me stay on the stage, and I thought I was going to go crazy. So I do wander around, and I do ask questions, and there will be people who have microphones that are going to help me with some interaction, because to be honest with you guys, it's not fun to stand up here and listen to myself speak for an hour, so I appreciate you helping me out and answering some questions and interacting. So I'm Adrienne Pirranstead. I'm an assistant professor at South Dakota State University, and I teach counseling, so I am a licensed professional counselor. When I started in SDSU Extension about, I think this is my fifth year, I decided to combine my expertise with what was happening in agriculture. So my dad is a farm machinery dealer. I grew up near Canestota. How many of you are kind of from the Canestota area? Anyone? Somewhat? Woohoo! Okay, so I grew up in the Canestota Marion area, and I grew up around farmers. And so back in 2015, I decided to conduct my first study to find out, well, what's happening with the mental health of farmers and ranchers. So I'll go through some of that today. Some of what I discussed will be somewhat heavy. So this is much different than what you've covered so far. I know you're learning about soil health and crops and that sort of thing. So today my presentation is on mental health. So we're going to talk a little bit about farm stress, what stress looks like, what it feels like, and when do we know when stress turns into more of an issue such as depression or another mental illness. So we'll kind of cover some of that today. And again, I do appreciate a lot of interaction. So we'll go ahead and get started. This is just a brief overview. I'm going to cover the differenti- I'm going to differentiate between mental health and mental illness because the two terms are used interchangeably, but they're very different. And then I'll talk about some South Dakota suicide data and you're probably wondering, well, how does that apply to me? Well, I don't know how many of you have paid attention to the national media lately, but how many of you have read articles about the suicide rate among farmers and ranchers and how it's increasing? How many of you have read those articles? So it's gaining national attention. It's actually an international concern, so I'll cover some of that. Gaining national attention, and so I'll cover the South Dakota data and we'll talk about, well, how might that apply to you? Mental health and agricultural producers, the environment right now, and I always over prepare and never get through everything because I do like to hear your stories too. So if you have something to share, please raise your hand. If there's something powerful that you want to say, please do so. I've had so many different stories shared of different struggles or challenges or even success stories of, hey, I struggled a little bit and this is what I did. So to differentiate between mental health and mental illness, mental health is our optimal state of well-being. So when people, when you ever hear advertisements say, let's talk about mental health, it's not a negative thing. It's not negative. We should always be striving for positive mental health. So it's our optimal state of well-being where we can contribute to society. We can contribute to our relationships, our jobs, our community, those sorts of things. And it's also a place where we can cope with stressors. What happens though is sometimes we experience so much stress and that's what's happening with producers right now. All of you guys are, I mean, nobody is immune to stress. We all experience stress at some point. I do too. I'll talk a little bit about my own stress signs as well. So we get all of this stress and what's happening with producers is that it's turning into chronic stress. So we went through years of drought and now we're experiencing lots of precipitation. So the weather is unpredictable, market prices are unpredictable and what's happening is it's turning into chronic stress and chronic stress is much more difficult to manage than our just our everyday stressors. So it's building up and building up and what do you do with that stress? Sometimes we have difficulties managing it. So optimal mental health is where we can cope with those stressors. So sometimes all that stress builds up and that can turn into a mental illness and a mental illness is a diagnosable medical condition. Now, does that mean everybody with a mental illness is diagnosed? No, because there are people out there that have depression that never go and see a doctor for it, that are never treated for it. So it's a medically diagnosed condition, it must impair multiple areas of your life. So it just can't impair your job. It has to impair your relationships, your thought patterns, your behaviors, all those sorts of things. It's a result from various factors. So we kind of have that nature versus nurture debate. I don't know, it kind of goes on and on with mental illness. But what we found is that it's a combination of both. It's a combination of genetic factors as well as environmental factors. But the hope is that it can be managed. So sometimes we experience all this stress, all this stress, and then it can turn into depression or anxiety. So I'll talk a little bit about where's that line at. One in four Americans has a mental illness. So take a look around the room. One out of every four struggles with a mental illness. Four out of ten people have received mental health treatment. What's happening is that, you know, it's kind of a debate, to be honest with you. Some people say that we're just gaining more awareness around mental illness and that more people are willing to seek treatment for it, thus the rate might be increasing. But four out of ten people have received mental health treatment. So I'm going to dive into a little bit about South Dakota suicide data first to kind of set the tone for what I'm going to discuss with all of you. If you take a look at the number of suicides in South Dakota from 2009 to 2018, you can see that they increased. We had the highest, is there a pointer thing on here? I'm sure there is. I'm scared to press the wrong button though. Woo! I guessed right. Okay, so as you can see in 2017, we had 192 suicides reported. That's the most that has ever been reported in South Dakota. We had the sixth highest suicide rate in the United States in 2017. So what happened between 2017 and 2018, this is my hunch. Just my hunch is that we in South Dakota did a lot of preventative work on suicide and that helped decrease our suicide rate. So 192. So why does this apply to all of you? If you take a look at the South Dakota suicides by age and sex, we have females in the turquoise and males in the purple. Who is leading every single category? Rural males. Rural males. The biggest concern is with our younger males that age 20 to 29 and a lot of the research is actually suggesting that our younger producers are the ones that are struggling more too. So the younger males. So I'll ask, when I present, I present lots of different with ad organizations and I'll ask questions and they'll say, well, you know, older people have gone through the 80s crisis. They experienced the 80s crisis and we experienced it and now we're more prepared. While our younger folks haven't experienced anything like this, this may be why our younger farmers and ranchers are struggling a little bit more. But if you take a look at our 30 to 59 year olds, they're not that far behind either. So being rural and being male are risk factors for suicide. So it's the 10th leading cause of death in South Dakota. It is the second leading cause among ages 15 to 34. With 192 suicides, we had the 6th highest suicide rate in the United States in 2017 and 78% of the suicides were male during this time period. So globally right now, I mentioned that this is an international concern, globally right now, agriculture is one of the occupations that experiences some of the highest stress levels and one that experiences some of the highest suicide rates. I don't know if I have my people with microphones around. Yeah. Okay. So I kind of want to hear your perceptions of what is it about agriculture that's so stressful? You guys can shout. I can get down too if I don't lose microphones. Okay. So what makes agriculture so stressful? Shout it out. Weather. Weather. Market prices. Financial. Yeah. Financial. What about financial? Debt payments. Debt payments? Yeah. Bankers want to get paid back. Yeah. Bankers want their money. Right? They want their money. So loans? Getting loans? Obtaining loans? Is that stressful? We're fiercely independent and don't want to share. Don't want to share what? Don't want to share our problems with others. Because we're fiercely independent. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. We'll talk about that a little bit more. Did everybody hear him? No. Oh, I need to say that to everybody. I'm scared I wouldn't get this stuff back on if I take it off. I was just saying we're fiercely independent so we don't want to share our problems with others. We wouldn't be in the occupation we're in if we weren't fiercely independent. And since you want a story, I'll tell you a quick story. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Give me a microphone. It's scary. I like it. When we started a production group, a small production group of about six producers started with a banker, a broker, and then some producers. And we were doing this in hopes of learning how to be better producers and how to make more money. Within two months we became a mental health group. The banker dropped out, the broker dropped out, and it was just us producers. We weren't very close when we started. We're incredibly close today because we learned that we could trust each other than we could share. And it's been an amazing thing for me personally, being able to go into a group that I can speak in confidence with knowing that they're not going to go blab at the others, and I can get things off my chest that ended up being very, very similar to the same stressors that they had. So I have to quiz you a little bit. Uh-oh. This isn't going to happen to everybody that shares. Don't be shy. Um, but I'm wondering what was helpful to establish trust in your group? Time. Time and communication. It's similar to any relationship that you have. Any relationship you have between, in your family or otherwise, the more time you spend together in communication that you have, the more you can learn to trust. So how long have you guys been meeting together? It's over two years now. Okay. Over two years. Okay. And it's been wonderful. One guy's gone through an almost divorce, and really I believe through the council of the group, he's reconciled with his wife, which is an amazing success story. One guy had to refinance and sell some land to get back into shape. And I also think that through the support of that group, he was able to weather that storm. So there's been some great successes come just from our small group. Oh, very great. Thank you for sharing that. You don't need to. I don't know. As long as everybody can hear me. Groups can be a very powerful thing. I actually teach group counseling, so I appreciate that. Groups can be very powerful because if you establish enough trust and cohesion, then you have that opportunity to share your struggles. And people give you ideas, right? Ideas and different ways to cope. Hope with it. So I appreciate your story. What else is going on that agriculture is different with stress? Oh, lack of progress in session planning. Tell me more about that. Yeah, she's coming with the microphone, because I'm guessing you're not the only one that's thinking that either, right? Too many times, I think fathers stay in farming operations too long. And when they turn it over, their sons don't, or daughters, don't have, or they haven't grown into the responsibility of the farm, because dad has made that crucial decision all the time. And when it gets dumped on through death, all of a sudden they don't know how to cope with the stresses of those group's own decisions. We have 40 chances in life that somewhere between mid-20s and the mid-60s, why do we want to have 60 chances? Why not? But get out of the way and let the next generation grow into those decision-making processes. Sure, sure. What do you think is hard about leaving agriculture, though? You mentioned that fathers stay too long. What's hard about leaving? Air conditioners. He said air conditioners make it hard to leave. You're worried the next generation won't be able to continue what you've built over the years. Okay, you're worried the next generation won't be able to continue what you've built, okay? Do you want to expand anymore? She's offering them, nope, that's good enough. Okay, so worried about the next generation. So I hear kind of multiple components going on that sometimes, and I'll work with farm families, too. You guys don't mind if I paste, do you? Awesome, thank you. Because it's hard to talk to the back from the front. In the front, I'm sorry, you'll have to turn around a little bit. I hear two different things, though. When I work with farm families, I hear about blurred boundaries. The blurred boundaries between the father and the son, or the multiple generations can have blurred boundaries. Sometimes I hear about why the son doesn't get to do fun things because the father still wants to do all the fun things like he's used to doing, or different responsibilities, they don't want to share responsibilities. But I also hear you saying, you in the middle there, saying maybe we need to work a little bit more to prepare the next generation? Would that be accurate? I need some more thoughts on this. I'm a Netsperd on preparing the next generation, but I'm a Netsperd on establishing strong boundaries in the family system in order to cope with stress. What we found when we went through the succession plan is the institutions really don't want dads to retire because the institutions have faith in the wisdom of dad, but they're afraid that when dad steps back and gets a total authority to the next generation, the wisdom is not there. So they're not as willing to stick their neck up with the younger generation. So the institution will become a hurdle in the fashion. What I hear you guys saying a little bit is maybe our younger farmers are struggling a little bit more. Number one, from maybe lack of preparation, but number two, lack of trust. People don't trust. Maybe they're having difficulties obtaining loans because they're used to the older generation, that sort of thing. Okay, what else makes agriculture stressful? We've talked about market prices, we've talked about weather, we've talked about succession planning. What else makes it stressful? I guess what I wanted to say is, why is it always got to be all or none with fathers passing it on to the next generation? Which generation, why can't they work with them? I know it's my operation with my father. He kind of set you up and made decisions together, but you still had your little heel to fail on. You didn't take the whole thing over to fail on. It didn't really get you started when they went together day in and day out. But then you could fail in small ways instead of just turning it all over to the son and saying, I'm done and figured out. Sure, absolutely. And that's where those, with that transitioning, it's so important to have those boundaries, right? Of, hey, maybe we can merge this operation together. Maybe we can pass this operation on together. It's not a, here, I'm going to drop this in your lap and you're going to expect to have to do it all, right? Because maybe we're setting people up for failure if we just drop it in people's laps, right? Son's laps or daughter's laps. I don't want to discriminate here. Because there are women in agriculture. There are lots of stories about women in agriculture and women definitely help on the farm. And I'll actually share what's happening with females right now too in agriculture. But, okay, what else is stressful? You guys in the back, don't make me come back there. Because I will. What's stressful? Anything else? Long hours. Long hours, yes. I can't go past here? Oh, you guys are saved. You're all saved. You guys are not. They're all like, can I switch to the back now? So unkind. He's in the doghouse. Okay, so long hours. Because when I talk with, especially women in agriculture, they'll talk about how there are no breaks. That some days you work from dawn to dusk and, you know, in the middle of the night, right? Long hours, what else? Women? They're not part of the operation. The wives that are not part of the operation. How so? They don't always get along. The wives that are not part of the operation do not always get along. Are you talking like multi-generational families? No. Okay, okay. So women. Women in the room. Not really. Women in the room, how do you feel about this? Most of the women are back here and I can't cross this line to get to them. Women are stressful. I'm stressful. I know. I'm experiencing stress. I need some support. I'm stressful. As a woman, I'm not quite sure what to say to that. Can we just say partners? Partners, yeah, partners? Would that be more accurate? Well, they're experiencing their women. But I'm sure women in the back, how many of your partners are stressful too? Thank you. Thank you. It can go both ways, right? So relationships, what I hear you saying is, are you stressful, right? Whether it's the father-son relationship, whether it's your relationship with your significant other, maybe you have multi-generational, maybe you have, you know, grandparents, parents, you, kids, multiple generations. So our children also experience our stress too, right? So I have a nine and seven-year-old daughter. I have two daughters, nine and seven. And when I'm stressed, I can go to zero to 10 really fast. I can go to zero to 10 toward the front, so you guys can see me a little bit better. But I can go to zero to 10 really fast. And when I go to zero to 10 fast, what do my kids do? Yeah, they can do the same thing. Go to zero to 10 fast, right? They run the other way. Yes, thank you. So some of them, it depends on the kid, right? Every kid is so different. Those of you that have kids understand that they're not the same child. So some of them will go up with you in intensity and some of them will run, will run and separate and they have that fight-or-flight response, right? Right? So mom's worked up, so either I need to fight back or I flight, right? So children experience our stress too. Even our toddlers. Your toddlers experience your stress. Okay? Even the little ones. So let's talk a little bit about stress. Most people experience stress daily. We're not immune to it. I experience stress, you experience stress, right? Every day. Every day. You guys experience stress over here. We all experience stress, okay? So we experience that when we perceive a situation as dangerous, difficult, or painful to cope with and we do not have the resources to cope. So we've already mentioned some examples of farm stress, right? We've mentioned weather. We've mentioned market prices. Some of you did not mention this, but one of the top stressors in my regional study were healthcare costs, right? We've mentioned relationships. We've mentioned, some people mention illness with your livestock, right? Planting, right? Planting season, planting late. Some of you planted really late this year, right? Due to moisture. Some of you had a hard time getting your crops out of the fields. So, different farm stressors. Some of you have also described as this overlap in the business, right? Your farm operation. We have this overlap where if you have a farm family, the business, you as an individual and the family are all mixed in in this farm, right? Sometimes there's no separation. So I'll talk with the women in the room if I can make my way back to them. They might say, there are no breaks. We don't get a break from the farm. And I'll talk with men who say, my hobby is my farm, right? All we do is talk about farming. It's shop, right? We don't ever talk about anything besides shop. We don't talk about anything besides the farm. What happens if we're struggling with our farm though? All of this feels bad, right? All of this can feel bad. Your family can feel bad, right? Your relationship with your significant other. You talked about being an independent, proud person, right? That farmers are independent, proud people. Well, if you're a significant other, they can feel your stress. We already talked about that. Your children can feel your stress. Your family members can feel your stress. So if you're stressed about it, what happens to your significant other? What do they do? They go shopping. They go shopping. That would be a way to cope. But what else? What does your significant other have to do? They have to guess how you're feeling, right? They have to guess how you're coping. Well, they can see on the outward signs, they can see your signs of stress. If you're talking to them, they don't know how serious stuff is in your head, right? So all of this gets messy. This stuff right here gets messy when it's all about the farm and the farm is straddling, right? So some signs of chronic prolonged stress. These are things I want you to think about, not only for yourself, but right now as a farming community, we need to take care of each other. Even though I'm talking way too much and pretty soon they'll cut me off somehow. Changing routine. So if there's some type of changing routine and the care of the livestock declines, the care of the farm-stead declines, that's a sign that, hey, maybe we need to have a conversation. As a neighbor, let's have a conversation. How are you doing? Increase in illness, increase in farm accidents. I talked with a farmer at Dakota Fest once who told me, I cannot sleep. I have all these things going on in my head and I cannot sleep. And the other day while I was driving my tractor I fell asleep and drove it through a fence. So our increased stress can contribute to farming accidents and you all know that agriculture has one of the highest mortality rates from accidents to appearance of the farm-stead declines, children show signs of stress. So when you experience stress, where do you notice it in your body? Just shout it out. Shoulders. They feel heavy, right? Painful? What else? Your head? Headaches. Headaches? I really want to go to the back. I can't believe they're not letting me go to the back. Where else do you feel your stress? Stomach. Stomach can feel sick, tight. I was super nervous before I came in here because you guys, there's a lot of people in this room, right? So I was feeling my stress in my stomach. I had lots of butterflies. Those of you in the back, where do you feel your stress? I'll meet someone with a microphone in the back there soon. Don't be shy. Where do you feel your stress? Chest. So you can have rapid heart rate, right? Feels heavy. Some people when they experience really, really intense stress feel like they're having a heart attack. It can also turn into a panic attack, right? Okay? So your chest. So, what I want you to think about is we're in agriculture, chronic stress is happening. So the first thing you need to do is recognize when you're stressed. And how you recognize when you're stressed is where you feel it. Because sometimes the thought is, oh my god, I'm stressed now. It's, wow, I'm feeling it physically. You feel your stress physically first. So it's important to recognize where you feel your physical stress. So some signs of stress. I'm going to go through these. And I want you to make a mental note of which ones apply to you. Okay? I also want you to make a mental note of what your family would say would apply to you, because they're very different. Because sometimes family members notice more things about us than we notice about ourselves. So some cognitive symptoms. Memory problems. I know that when I'm really stressed, I'm constantly asking Siri to remind me of meetings. Not a series, not always. She never understands when I'm saying half the time, but she gets the gist. Inability to concentrate. Maybe some poor judgment. I had a farmer at my last presentation say that when I'm stressed I don't think things through as well. Seeing only the negative. When we're stressed we can spiral really fast. 10 minutes, are you serious? Oh my gosh. We can spiral really fast. We can only see the negative. Aches are racing thoughts and constant worrying. How many worriers do I have in the room? How many of you worry? Don't be shy. It's usually three quarters of the room. Here, lift your arms up again. Look around the room. Are you alone in worrying right now? You're not alone. Physical symptoms. We kind of talked about a lot of these. The aches and pains, the chest pain, frequent colds, emotional symptoms, moodiness. I kind of talked about my irritability when I get stressed. One of the biggest red flags, I want you to think about this in terms of yourself, your neighbors, your friends, your family members. One of the biggest red flags is that loneliness and isolation. If somebody starts to talk to you, it's a huge red flag. So I had a farmer come up to me after a conference I presented at and he said, one of our friends just died by suicide. He was a producer, just died by suicide. And we saw that he withdrew. He stopped hanging out. He stopped coming to the bar talking. He stopped talking to us. He started drinking more. And we just always thought he would come and talk to us. And he didn't. So I want you to think about that. That it's not always going to be, hey, I'm struggling. I need some help. It's more you going up to that person and saying, I care about you. I've noticed these changes in you. And I care about you. Behavioral symptoms, sometimes we're stress eaters. We eat too much or too less. Sleep too much or too little. We can procrastinate. Sometimes we turn to I'll ask in my presentations, what do you guys do to manage stress? A lot of times I hear I drink. Right? I drink. And some people will say I go to the bar. Well, the bar is a great place to socialize, right? You'll see friends up there, that sort of thing. But there's a fine line between socializing and then drinking too much to cope. And that's where if somebody comes up to you and is concerned about your drinking, people are noticing that maybe you're coping ineffectively. So I covered all those signs of symptoms or signs of stress. Now I want you to take a look at this list. These are the symptoms of depression. How many of these symptoms of depression are signs of stress? Most of them, right? So that leads me back to that question. How do you know if you're stressed or how do you know if you're depressed? And that's so hard sometimes. Because that line is blurry. If it's pervasive, if it's persistent, if you can't shake your feelings of general unhappiness, maybe you're hopeless, maybe you have all these different signs of stress and you cannot shake them. And you wake up every day and you cannot shake these. That's a sign that you're depressed, that you're experiencing depression. If somebody comes up to you and tells you that they're worried about you, noticing changes in you, that can be a sign that you're experiencing depression. Now, don't get me wrong. When I'm stressed I crawl into a hole for a couple of days and I kind of isolate myself and my family's, I have an identical twin sister, she'll call me and she'll say, Andy are you in your hole right now? I'm like, yeah. It's okay to go into your hole for a couple of days, but if I went there for two weeks and didn't come back out, is that concerning? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so if it's pervasive, if it's persistent, if you can't come out of those feelings, it's a sign that you're experiencing depression. They're going to come me off soon, but I do want to talk about what's happening. So the depression rate is increasing among farmers and ranchers and the literature is suggesting anywhere between 7.4% to 20%. I have conducted three studies so far in 2015 and I have these slides but I won't get to them. In 2015 my research showed an 8.7% depression rate. 2017 with South Dakota farmers it jumped up to 17% in two years. In 2019 my regional study with South Dakota, Michigan, Missouri and Kansas we had 600 producers. 29% of farmers reported mild to severe depression symptoms. 29% a little over one out of every four. It just keeps increasing. In 2012 the CDC listed agriculture as the highest occupational group for suicide and then they retracted the data. They retracted the data and they basically said well we know farmers and ranchers are struggling with suicide. It's higher than the general population. Some research is actually suggesting it's higher among producers than it is with veterans right now. So my takeaway for all of you guys is notice your stress signs. If people are telling you that you're concerned that they're concerned about you it is a strong point that maybe you need to start being concerned too. Talk to each other. I know that there's a level of competitiveness in agriculture right? I presented the first time I ever heard that I was out West River with a group of ranchers and they're like well we can't talk to our neighbors because we're in competition with them. But you have to let that go because right now you're all in the same boat. You're all in the same boat. If you looked around the room you're all worrying about probably the same things right? So is it okay to talk to each other? Absolutely. I love that group. If you can form a group of friends of other fellow farmers that you can talk to you build a support network. We did purpose on purpose. We made sure that each producer was at least 20 miles away from each other to help get away from that competitive future. That's whenever we were designing it. Okay so he's saying that when they designed their group the farmers were at least 20 miles away from each other so they weren't in competition with each other? Was the main reason. Okay. Find that support network. Talk to your significant others. Okay I do want to step there. Ha! I'm not leaving you guys out. Okay. So if you take a look at my research where am I at here? Okay this was the yes. So back in 2015 I said there was an 8.7% depression rate. 3.1% of females reported symptoms. In 2017 it was 17%. The females jumped up as well. But what you'll find are the females struggling more with anxiety. So why are the females engaged in adult culture struggling with anxiety? Throughout your ideas quit. Worried about their husbands? They're worried about their husbands. Somebody said their husbands are pain in the asses so I probably shouldn't swear considering he's taping me. I'm just repeating what somebody said. Okay so they're worried about their significant other right? What else? About the farm. They're assuming more leadership roles too. They are assuming more leadership roles. Absolutely. More responsibilities on the farm or leadership. I've also been hearing more about spouses. The females having to take off-farm jobs to support health insurance. To provide health insurance to support the family farm right? So lots of them are not only working on the family farm they also have their outside farm job right? Okay. Not only should you be concerned about yourselves you should be concerned about your significant other because if you're not talking about your struggles they're having to guess which only increases their anxiety too right? If you're not telling them all the negative things that are happening on the farm they're making assumptions about how bad it is. Okay so communication within the family is so important. Open communication talking about what's happening is important. How am I on time? Nobody's cut me off yet. I have five minutes. Should I open it for questions though first? I have so much more. They're cutting me off. Okay. If you have a loved one who is struggling do not hesitate to ask the tough questions. Okay. If your significant other your partner doesn't talk about their feelings I know it can be worrisome. I know you have to guess. But don't hesitate or if you even have a neighbor who's struggling you've noticed that the farm is declining in appearance. You've noticed different things. Do not hesitate to ask are you thinking about killing yourself? That's a hard question to ask. Well as a counselor I actually asked a question quite a bit. But I had a friend that was struggling and I interrupted the conversation and I said I know you might be mad at me for asking this but I have to ask it because I care about you. And I said I hear your struggles. I hear what you're talking about. Are you having any thoughts of killing yourself? And he said no and kind of explained. And I in one of my more recent presentations I had a female talk about how a neighbor a young male died by suicide a farmer died by suicide and she her son had said mom you need to go talk to this person and she didn't make it over there in time. If you have concerns about somebody do not hesitate to ask the question. That's make anything away from this please take away that. That person may be angry with you but I as a person I would rather have them be mad at me than be dead. Okay? Start talking. Whether it's to your pastor to your spouse your family members, your neighbors find someone to talk to don't hold it inside and I know it's easier said than done. You're not going to say the wrong thing. You know what's interesting though is this type of stuff isn't black or white you guys and just by asking the question are you thinking about you're killing yourself you're not planting it in their head you're not planting it in their head there really isn't a wrong thing to say. If you come about it as I'm concerned about you and these are the changes I've noticed about you that's a great place to start. Do you want to throw them a curve ball like if they sit down and all of a sudden you're like hey are you thinking about killing yourself I mean is that a great way to start off conversation? Yes. No. Do not throw them a curve ball like that. Do not gain up on them either. I've had situations where people will do some type of group intervention. If I had a group of my friends sit down like say five of them sit down with me and they're like we're concerned about you and are you thinking about killing yourself what's the first thing I'm going to want to do? Probably run right? So individual conversations may be more a more effective approach. So sit down and chitchat first chitchat first hey how's it going how are things going chitchat and then lead into hopefully you have that door opener of you know I've noticed some things and I'm really concerned about you but if I sit down and I throw you a curve ball right away saying hey are you thinking about killing yourself not an effective way of communicating that concern. Other questions we're ending on a very heavy note any other questions I hope I gave you something to think about at least recognize your stress symptoms I didn't really talk about stress management because I ran out of time but hopefully you have some method of stress management that is off the farm I will repeat that again effective stress management off the farm because if you go back to those spheres I was talking about how everything is interrelated you don't escape right okay stress management healthy stress management if you have questions about that I'm happy to give ideas I'm gonna skip to the end here woo hoo see I had so much more to talk about look at that um well Avera has a farmer stress hotline it's free confidential and available 24-7 so call in with any concerns that you have I talked to one of the directors a couple weeks ago and he said we have farmers calling about various things it's not always about suicide it's not always about depression maybe they have some questions or concerns um so that a very farmer stress hotline is always available and then you also have the helpline center too this is my contact information if you have concerns about somebody you need some help I'm more than willing to help you connect to resources so sometimes after I give presentations I'll receive two or three emails saying or a phone call saying hey do you have any resources in this area I'm interested in seeing a counselor in the rabbit city area do you have any suggestions I just talked to a producer a couple days ago where he's been um trying to see a counselor and finding a counselor is kind of like shopping for shoes guys and I'm a counselor I'm well aware of this so it's kind of like shopping for shoes do you find the right fit your first time no I like to think that I can connect with everybody but that's not always the case so if you see a counselor and it just doesn't feel right don't stop trying and so this man wanted to know kind of hit my perceptions of what he should ask when looking for a counselor so don't hesitate to contact me if you're concerned about yourself and that sort of thing I'm always willing to help okay on that note I'm sure they're going to cut me off now but thank you for your time I feel very honored to be here and talk to you guys thank you