Developing and Implementing Farm Stress Training to Address Agricultural Producer Mental Health.

Farmers and ranchers (agricultural producers) have higher psychological distress and suicide rates than the general population. Poorer mental health status and outcomes among producers are often attributed to the continuously challenging economic, social, and climate-related changes to agriculture as an occupation and industry. This article describes the development of a training program for agribusiness professionals from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (N = 500) who work with producers, as they regularly interact with producers and thus are in a position to readily offer helpful mental health resources. The goal of the program was for agribusiness professionals to build skills and confidence to identify and respond to distressed producers. The educational program was offered primarily online and included a 1-day in-person training to practice skills to communicate with distressed producers and refer them to appropriate mental health resources. Evaluation of the program demonstrated participants experienced gains in knowledge and skills related to identifying and helping distressed producers.

A review of the nurtured heart approach to parenting: evaluation of its theoretical and empirical foundations.

The Nurtured Heart Approach to parenting (NHA; Glasser & Easley, 2008) is summarized and evaluated in terms of its alignment with current theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence in family studies and developmental science. Originally conceived and promoted as a behavior management approach for parents of difficult children (i.e., with behavior disorders), NHA is increasingly offered as a valuable strategy for parents of any children, despite a lack of published empirical support. Parents using NHA are trained to minimize attention to undesired behaviors, provide positive attention and praise for compliance with rules, help children be successful by scaffolding and shaping desired behavior, and establish a set of clear rules and consequences. Many elements of the approach have strong support in the theoretical and empirical literature; however, some of the assumptions are more questionable, such as that negative child behavior can always be attributed to unintentional positive reinforcement by parents responding with negative attention. On balance, NHA appears to promote effective and validated parenting practices, but its effectiveness now needs to be tested empirically.

An Effective Mental Health Literacy Program for Farm Financial Service Providers.

OBJECTIVES: Mental health literacy programs related to agriculture can help enhance skills among agricultural community members and service providers to assist farmers and producers who are experiencing distress. The aim of the current article is to describe an agricultural mental health literacy education-based intervention program offered to USDA Farm Service Agency farm financial service providers. The program was implemented as a self-paced, online training through USDA's AgLearn platform to N = 500 FSA staff. METHODS: Pre-/post-evaluations were used to measure objective and self-rated knowledge and skills. Correlations, paired-samples t-tests, ANOVA, and content analysis were used to analyze data. RESULTS: The training resulted in significant improvements in objective and self-rated knowledge. While there were no gender differences in objective knowledge, men's self-rated knowledge and skills were significantly higher than that of women at pre-test; at post-test, there were no significant gender differences in self-rated knowledge and skills. CONCLUSION: Evaluations of this agricultural mental health literacy program demonstrate its effectiveness for farm financial service providers. Expanding access to such trainings among agricultural service providers who interact with producers regularly can help improve agricultural communities' skills to initiate and engage in critical conversations about mental health.

Rural adolescents' access to adolescent friendly health services.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to assess rural North Dakota adolescents' experiences in accessing adolescent-friendly health services and to examine the relationship between rural adolescents' communication with health care providers and risk behaviors. METHODS: Data are from the Rural Adolescent Health Survey (RAHS), an anonymous survey of 14- to 19-year-olds (n = 322) attending secondary schools in four frontier counties of North Dakota. Descriptive statistics were used to assess participants' access to adolescent-friendly health services characterized as accessible, acceptable, and appropriate. Logistic regressions were used to examine whether participant-reported risk behaviors predicted communication with health care providers about individual health risk behaviors. RESULTS: Rural adolescents reported high access to acceptable primary health care services but low levels of effective health care services. Participant report of engaging in high-risk behaviors was associated with having received information from health care providers about the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. DISCUSSIONS: These findings reveal missed opportunities for primary care providers in rural settings to provide fundamental health promotion to adolescents.