May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Farmers and ranchers are dealing with a lot of stress due to many factors. Dr. Larry Tranel, a dairy field specialist at Iowa State University Extension, says a lot of stress makes a challenging occupation even harder.

“If I’m working with a farmer, I guess one of the biggest things is it helps to realize that if they’re under a lot of stress, their ability to organize and calculate, to think, to make decisions, to plan, is reduced. And so, I like to use the example of the husband who went in to talk to the banker, and the banker told him 20 different things that had to happen. He goes back home, his wife asks, ‘What happened?’ and he goes, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ Not that he’s not being truthful. It’s just that he really can’t understand, and so, a lot of times, you have to write this stuff down for the farmer because their ability to try to keep track of a lot of things when they’re under a lot of stress is just next to impossible.”

In his years of working with farmers, Tranel said there are tactics farmers can utilize to help manage their stress.

“I’ve worked with a lot of farmers going through a lot of different things, and they always take a look at simple things, like their breathing techniques, their eating habits because of high-sugar diets, not getting enough sleep, or not getting enough exercise. Even meeting people, you know, a lot of farmers are kind of introverts. You go back to personality: They tend to be introverted and might not have a lot of people that they talk to on any given day. So, those things can all add to the stress as well. For a farmer, how do you get them to relax? I’ll write it down, try to make a plan, help them do that, and just help them understand that there are some things you just can’t do when you’re under a lot of stress.”