Financial and mental health challenges in agriculture: Key informants' perspectives on farmers’ ability and willingness to seek help

As mental health challenges in agriculture have become more visible in recent years, farm organizations, farm service providers, and government agencies have invested in programs and resources to alleviate these challenges. Yet, these investments have overall been made with limited understanding of farmers' ability and willingness to engage with mental health support. Even less is known about how farmers engage with financial support despite financial challenges being a major stressor. In this paper, we leverage data from 59 interviews with 64 key informants in three U.S. states to explore their perspectives on the following: 1) farmers' willingness and ability to seek help for financial and mental health challenges and 2) the factors shaping farmers' willingness and ability to seek help for these two sets of challenges. Key informants described farmers as more willing than they were able to seek help, that they were most willing to engage with financial support, and least able to engage with mental health support. Many of the factors explaining willingness and ability were the same for mental health and financial challenges. Our findings highlight the importance of helping farmers access programs and resources (instead of the prevailing approach framed around convincing farmers to seek help), focusing on addressing the major barriers that impede farmers’ ability to seek help, and systematically linking financial and mental health programs and resources. Productive avenues for future research include examining the interplay between ability and willingness from the perspective of farmers and in countries with stronger social policies.