From farm tasks to family duties, women in agriculture juggle several things at once. An upcoming event will share how to balance it with your mental health.
GALVA, Illinois — An upcoming event in Galva, Illinois, is highlighting the unique mental health challenges women in agriculture face.
“Strong Enough to Bend: Turning Breakdowns into Breakthroughs” is hosted by Ag Mental Health Specialist Adrienne DeSutter and takes place on Thursday, Jan. 29. It will start at 6 p.m. at Black Hawk College’s East Campus (Building A auditorium). The event is organized by several county Farm Bureaus, including Rock Island, Henry, Stark, Mercer, Knox, Bureau and Marshall-Putnam.
DeSutter’s family farms here in western Illinois, but she is also the founder of Sow Hope Grow Hope.
“I get to travel all over the place to sort of work as a bridge builder, connecting farm families and different agricultural industry organizations with mental health resources,” DeSutter said.
DeSutter hosts numerous events similar to Thursday’s. Her focus for the talk in Galva circles around women in agriculture and the many hats they have to wear.
“Women are juggling all sorts of different things and having all different roles, whether they’re operating the equipment, operating the minivan, tracking where the kids need to be, delivering field mills, working on the books and the paperwork, there’s all sorts of different things,” she said. “Farming looks different for women no matter what family you’re in.”
Thursday’s talk will discuss what it’s like to juggle all these responsibilities and how to prioritize one’s mental health in the meantime.
“Bringing women together involved in agriculture, working in agriculture, and just having a night where we can discuss….it’s just a great chance to bring together a whole group of women and really dig deep and focus on a lot of things that affect our lives,” Katie Laleman with the Henry County Farm Bureau said.
According to the National Rural Health Association, the suicide rate for farmers is 3.5 times higher than the general population. DeSutter said this statistic is not new, but that more work has been done in recent years to understand why the rate is so high.
“Not only suicide rates, but we also see depression rates and anxiety rates and chronic stress rates being very high among farmers,” she said. “When you have someone who is struggling…that means the whole farm struggles.”
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