Examining the Relationship Between Stress, Barriers to Healthcare, and Alcohol Use in the US Agricultural Community.

OBJECTIVE: Farming is a high-risk, physically challenging occupation. Considering farmers report high stress and barriers to seeking healthcare, it is important to understand factors influencing alcohol use to tailor interventions and healthcare resources for alcohol use in rural areas. METHODS: An online survey was distributed to the agricultural community in the United States (n = 1045). Data was collected through QualtricsXM, and SPSS 28.0 was used for data analysis. RESULTS: Both formal healthcare challenges (ß = 0.112, p = .004) and stigma (ß = 0.328, p < .001) were identified as predictors of increased perceived stress, while resilience (ß = -0.137, p < .001) was identified as a protective factor against perceived stress. Higher perceived stress was identified as a predictor of binge drinking behavior (ß = 0.151, p < .001), and formal healthcare challenges were associated with higher drinking volume (ß = 0.174, p < .001), and engaging in more frequent alcohol consumption (ß = 0.123, p = .004) over the last three months. Resilience was identified as a protective factor against increased alcohol consumption (ß = -0.084, p = .032). Stigmatization of help-seeking for mental health challenges was associated with fewer instances of alcohol consumption over the last three months (ß = -0.169, p < .001). CONCLUSION: Interventions to address stress and alcohol consumption should focus on promoting resilience, reducing stigma, and encouraging peer support to address cultural norms around mental health and alcohol use. Rural practitioners should develop cultural competence to better serve agricultural communities to prevent alcohol use disorders. To discuss ways to reduce stigma and encourage peer support to address alcohol and mental health disorders in rural farming populations.

The Intersection of Gender and Occupational Roles in Agriculture: Stress, Resilience, and Alcohol Behaviors of US Farmers.

OBJECTIVES: The purposes of this study were to explore behavioral and mental health outcomes among a sample of farmers living in the United States and to compare differences between male and female farmers. METHODS: An online cross-sectional survey was distributed within the farming community by researchers, farming consultants, and community partners. χ 2 and analysis or variance analyses were used to explore relationships between variables of interest. RESULTS: Female survey respondents reported significantly higher perceived stress and significantly lower resilience than their male counterparts. A significant interaction effect was observed between gender and farm roles on alcohol consumption patterns, with female farm owners and managers reporting binge drinking behavior most frequently. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified distinct differences between respondents in terms of stress, resilience, and alcohol consumption patterns, based on both gender and occupational roles.

Stressors and Coping Strategies in Rural Farmers: A Qualitative Study.

OBJECTIVE: Farmers in rural areas face unique lifestyle stressors which may cause physical and behavioral health issues. Because of external stressors, and often an internal drive to succeed, farmers in rural areas have high rates of prescription drug use, excessive alcohol use, depression, and suicide. These methods of coping may increase prevalence of distress and mental illness in farmers leading to poor health outcomes. Social norms within rural farming populations are influenced by culture, family, friends, and community beliefs which make it difficult to conduct research about substance use and mental health. The purpose of this study is to identify stressors in rural farmers and positive and negative coping strategies for stress in the farming population. METHODS: In-depth interviews (35 minutes-1 hour) were conducted with full-time rural farmers (n = 15) in ten counties throughout Georgia. Using qualitative analysis, inductive coding was used to identify themes and patterns among transcribed interview recordings. RESULTS: Stressors reported by farmers included: financial, work-life balance, physical health and disconnect from non-farming populations. Farmers described feeling misperceived by those outside of their community and feeling a distinct lack of control due to external factors. All the farmers identified alcohol use as a primary coping strategy to deal with stressors. CONCLUSIONS: This study identifies distinct stressors associated with a farming lifestyle and socio-cultural factors that are barriers to care for mental health and substance use in rural farmers. This study can provide information to health practitioners that may lead to a better understanding of the factors influencing farmer's health outcomes.

Mutate-and-chemical-shift-fingerprint (MCSF) to characterize excited states in RNA using NMR spectroscopy.

It is important to understand the dynamics and higher energy structures of RNA, called excited states, to achieve better understanding of RNA function. R1ρ relaxation dispersion NMR spectroscopy (RD) determines chemical shift differences between the most stable, ground state and the short-lived, low-populated excited states. We describe a procedure for deducing the excited state structure from these chemical shift differences using the mutate-and-chemical-shift-fingerprint (MCSF) method, which requires ~2-6 weeks and moderate understanding of NMR and RNA structure. We recently applied the MCSF methodology to elucidate the excited state of microRNA 34a targeting the SIRT1 mRNA and use this example to demonstrate the analysis. The protocol comprises the following steps: (i) determination of the secondary structure of the excited state from RD chemical shift data, (ii) design of trapped excited state RNA, (iii) validation of the excited state structure by NMR, and (iv) MCSF analysis comparing the chemical shifts of the trapped excited state with the RD-derived chemical shift differences. MCSF enables observation of the short-lived RNA structures, which can be functionally and structurally characterized by entrapment.

Spiking patterns and synchronization of thalamic neurons along the sleep-wake cycle.

Spiking patterns and synchronization dynamics of thalamic neurons along the sleep-wake cycle are studied in a minimal model of four coupled conductance-based neurons. The model simulates two thalamic neurons coupled via a gap junction and driven by a synaptic input from a two-neuron model of sleep regulation by the hypothalamus. In accord with experimental data, the model shows that during sleep, when hypothalamic wake-active neurons are silent, the thalamic neurons discharge bursts of spikes. During wake, the excitatory synaptic input from the hypothalamus drives the coupled thalamic neurons to a state of tonic firing (single spikes). In the deterministic case, the thalamic neurons synchronize in-phase in the bursting regime but demonstrate multi-stability of out-of-phase, in-phase, and asynchronous states in the tonic firing. However, along the sleep-wake cycle, once the neurons synchronize in-phase during sleep (bursting), they stay synchronized in wake (tonic firing). It is thus found that noise is needed to reproduce the experimentally observed transitions between synchronized bursting during sleep and asynchronous tonic firing during wake. Overall, synchronization of bursting is found to be more robust to noise than synchronization of tonic firing, where a small disturbance is sufficient to desynchronize the thalamic neurons. The model predicts that the transitions between sleep and wake happen via chaos because a single thalamic neuron exhibits chaos between regular bursting and tonic activity. The results of this study suggest that the sleep- and wake-related dynamics in the thalamus may be generated at a level of gap junction-coupled clusters of thalamic neurons driven from the hypothalamus which would then propagate throughout the thalamus and cortex via axonal long-range connections.