Preventive agricultural medicine: a student's perspective of farmers' mental health.
As a medical student completing a required rural community medicine clerkship, I discovered my home community's concern for mental health of farmers. A local economic downturn affects everyone, but especially the farmers. One farmer had recently committed suicide. Leaning heavily on work presented at a Nebraska summit on the farm crisis and mental health and on the National Rural Health Association issue paper on rural mental health, I found farmer and rural mental health to be a widespread concern, exacerbated by a scarcity of rural mental health resources. In my recommendations for rural Alabama, I endorse recommendations of others, including strengthening the local family physician role as "front door" to the mental health system, outreach with such agents as extension personnel and ministers, and farm crisis hotlines.
Tabereaux
Paul B
PB
Yale-New Haven Medical Center, CT, USA.
Wheat
John R
JR