An Effective Mental Health Literacy Program for Farm Financial Service Providers

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Mental Health
• Professional Development
• Health Literacy

Background:

• Farmers and agricultural producers face significant mental health challenges.
• Effective support requires trained service providers equipped with mental health literacy.
• Existing agricultural support systems can be enhanced through targeted education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe an agricultural mental health literacy intervention program.
• To evaluate the program's impact on USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) farm financial service providers.
• To assess changes in knowledge and skills related to mental health support for farmers.

Main Methods:

• A self-paced, online training program was delivered via USDA's AgLearn platform.
• The intervention targeted 500 FSA staff members.
• Pre-/post-evaluations measured objective and self-rated knowledge and skills using statistical analyses including t-tests and ANOVA.

Main Results:

• The training led to significant improvements in both objective and self-rated knowledge.
• Initial gender differences in self-rated knowledge (men higher than women) were not present post-training.
• Objective knowledge showed no significant gender differences at any stage.

Conclusions:

• The agricultural mental health literacy program proved effective for farm financial service providers.
• Expanding such training to agricultural service providers can improve support for farmers' mental well-being.
• Enhanced provider skills can facilitate crucial mental health conversations within agricultural communities.