Mental health conversations don’t always begin in a counselor’s office. Sometimes they start around a kitchen table while creating or enjoying a meal. Other times, they happen over a tailgate, in a farm shop or between neighbors checking cattle.
For two agricultural advocates, those familiar settings are exactly where they believe the stigma surrounding mental health in rural America can begin to change.
During a recent Rural Minds webinar, Jolie Foreman, executive director of Shelby County Cares in northeast Missouri, and Thomas Eisenbarth, founder of Grounded Ag in northeast Kansas, shared how they’re helping farmers become more comfortable talking about mental health by meeting them where they are.
“We’ve learned that people care deeply,” Foreman says. “The challenge isn’t that people don’t care. It’s just a lot of people don’t know how to start these conversations. They fear being judged if they do.”
Build Trust Before Crisis
Foreman understands agriculture firsthand. She farms alongside her husband, raises Red Angus cattle and row crops, and is raising the next generation of farmers.
Her work with Shelby County Cares grew out of tragedy. Shelby County once had one of the highest suicide rates per capita in Missouri, reflecting a broader national pattern in which farmers experience suicide rates up to 3.5 times higher than the general population. It also touched her own life directly through personal loss in her family and within her community.
“I decided I had to create and figure out a way to help,” she says. “We wanted to peel back the layers and truly find an understanding behind it so that we can be there before crisis occurs. A way for people to feel comfortable talking about what’s really going on, to recognize the signs earlier and to make sure no one is left carrying it alone until it reaches a breaking point.”
Instead of building separate programs or formal spaces for mental health conversations, Foreman focused on something more familiar: strengthening the everyday settings where trust already exists.
That meant the kitchen table, the farm shop and other routine gathering points where people already talk about weather, crops, livestock and family life. She started by hosting freezer meal workshops for farm wives in the community.
As meals were prepared, conversations naturally moved beyond recipes and into the realities of stress, uncertainty and family pressures. The goal wasn’t to create a designated mental health space, but to make it easier for those conversations to surface in spaces people already trust and return to regularly.
“After that first meal workshop, establishing that trust within the community grew the trust within their own homes,” Foreman says. “Then they started calling me saying, ‘Hey, I’ve seen this. Can you help me figure out if there’s something here to worry about?’ Shortly after that, I had men calling.”
Speak Agriculture’s Language
Eisenbarth believes one reason mental health remains difficult to discuss is because farmers often see it as something separate from everyday life. He wants to change that by framing mental wellness the same way producers think about machinery maintenance.
“We’re fixers,” Eisenbarth says. “If there’s a problem, I need to troubleshoot it.”
Rather than talking only about mental health, he encourages producers to think about maintaining the body’s operating system.
“We need to look at mental health the same way we think about taking care of machinery,” he says. “A good farmer isn’t going to pull out the planter or tractor and start planting without checking the tires, changing the oil or greasing the equipment first.”
Ignoring those maintenance steps eventually leads to breakdowns, he says. The same principle applies to people.
“If you run a tractor full speed and just don’t take care of it, the sustainability and longevity of that machine drastically decreases,” Eisenbarth says. “I think we need to look at the human side of agriculture in that same manner.”
He refers to this concept as an operator manual for people, helping producers understand that stress isn’t a personal weakness but a biological response.
“It’s science,” he says. “It’s not scary.”
Ag’s Constant Pressure
Unlike a stressful event that eventually ends, farming often means living under continuous pressure. Eisenbarth compares it to constantly being chased by danger.
“When we were cavemen, if a saber-tooth tiger was chasing us, we’d get away and eventually calm down,” he says. “But in agriculture, we’re being chased by a tiger 24/7.”
For many farmers and ranchers, there is rarely a true off-season from worry. Commodity markets can swing overnight. Fertilizer, feed and fuel costs continue to rise. Machinery breaks down at the worst possible time, and bills continue to pile up.
At the same time, access to care is limited. About 65% of rural counties do not have a psychiatrist, highlighting the shortage of available mental health professionals close to where producers live.
Studies also show nearly one in four rural adults experiences a mental illness in a given year, while rural suicide rates are consistently about 20% to 88% higher than urban rates. Without opportunities to slow down and recover, Eisenbarth says that constant pressure does not go away. It builds. Over time, that can wear on both physical and mental health.
A Changing Generation
Although stigma still exists, both Foreman and Eisenbarth believe attitudes toward mental health are beginning to shift.
“I absolutely believe the stigma is still there,” Foreman says. “But I do feel like the generations my age and younger are really more open to having these conversations.”
She notes that the change is less about a single program or initiative and more about a slow shift in how everyday stress, burnout and mental health are talked about in rural communities. Instead of being something only discussed in moments of crisis, those conversations are becoming more normal in day-to-day life.
She also works with teen mentors in local schools to help normalize conversations about mental health before young people enter adulthood.
“We’re normalizing those conversations in my home,” she says. “I’m hoping by just normalizing it, they’re realizing it’s not such a scary topic.”
Foreman also points to another challenge unique to rural communities: access.
“There are no therapy offices. There’s no doors to drive by to see it,” she says. “You can go through three or four counties and never see a therapy office. Then you think, ‘It must just be me.’”
In many rural areas, that lack of visible services can make it feel like help is not available nearby. When people do not see counseling offices or mental health providers in their communities, it can reinforce the idea they are on their own or what they are feeling is not common.
Connection Comes First
Both Foreman and Eisenbarth emphasize reducing stigma doesn’t require elaborate programs or formal spaces. It comes back to trusted relationships and the places where conversations already happen.
In rural communities, that’s the kitchen table after a long day, the shop during a repair, or a truck cab while checking fields and livestock. The point isn’t to create something separate, but to keep those everyday spaces open enough that real conversations can surface when they need to.
That’s also where Foreman says the work starts and ends.
“We want to help people realize they don’t have to carry this alone, and that there’s strength in having someone to lean on when things get heavy,” he says.
In the end, they say it’s not something that comes from a program or formal initiative, but from what’s already there. It’s people checking in on each other in the middle of everyday life and being willing to keep those conversations going when it matters most.
