Toward a Public Health Approach to Farmer Suicide Prevention: The Potential Power of Systems Change

Suicide among farmers has, over the past 20 years, garnered attention from scholars around the world. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this paper will present a framework for considering farmer suicide that builds upon the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior and extends our current explanations of suicide to include a multilevel, multifactorial focus on individual, interpersonal, community and systemic factors at the root of stressors contributing to suicide among farmers. Secondly, a blueprint for farmer suicide prevention, leveraging the Water of Systems Change Model, is proposed.

In the spirit of conveying multi-layered influence on farmer suicide while highlighting relevant levels for prevention a parsimonious, prevention-based model of farmer suicide is presented.

The Water of Systems Change (WSC) model incorporates research to bring attention to the community, organizational, and societal conditions that keep a problem, such as farmer suicide, from being eradicated.

Suicide is a societal issue that requires a multi-level response. Farmer suicide is a particular concern, as farmers provide for and support all of us. It is incumbent upon public health and the community-at-large to improve our policies, systems, and contexts to create an environment in which farmers are also provided for and supported.