The Landscape of Mental Health and Financial Support for Midwest Farmers

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

1:00 PM (ET) / 12:00 PM (CT) / 11:00 AM (MT) / 10:00 AM (PT)

The farm income crisis of the late 2010s and the COVID-19 pandemicamplified mental health challenges in agriculture, which resulted in thedevelopment of a range of mental health programs. In this webinar, we willpresent the findings from the first two years of a five-year research projectto understand what the landscape of support in the Midwest looks like and howfarmers engage with it. Programmatic and policy implications of these findings,along with the project’s next steps, will also be shared.

Presenters:

• Florence Becot, Professor, Nationwide Insurance Early Career Professor in Agricultural Safety and Health, Penn State
• Carrie Henning-Smith, Associate Professor, Division of Health Policy & Management and Co-Director, Rural Health Research Center, University of Minnesota
• Andrea Bjornestad, Associate Professor/Extension Specialist-Mental Health, South Dakota State University
• Sarah Ruszkowski, Research Technologist, Penn State

Hosts: The four Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDC) —the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development,the Southern Rural Development Center, the Western Rural Development Center, and the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development.

The RRDCs receive core funds from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).