rural health care

Seeking a Cure: Mental health access scarce in rural, farming communities

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With farmers facing increasing stress and depression, Midwestern states and national farm groups are making more efforts to better provide services to alleviate the high rate of suicide among the agriculture industry. Yet in rural areas, this care is more of a challenge. Rural hospitals — often the primary source of health care services in these areas — are closing or merging. Since 2010, 23 hospitals have closed across the Midwest — a loss of nearly 1,000 beds, according to the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. 

An Institute for Nonprofit News investigation by 12 news outlets across seven states found that rural Midwest hospitals have reduced services or merging with larger health systems in an effort to deal with financial and regulatory pressures. Only two of those Midwestern hospitals were in Illinois, but accessing mental health services in rural communities remains difficult. Some groups have decided to address the situation themselves. 

A collaborative project including the Institute for Nonprofit News and INN members IowaWatch, KCUR, Bridge Magazine, Wisconsin Watch, Side Effects Public Media and The Conversation; as well as Iowa Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA), Iowa Falls Times Citizen and N’west Iowa REVIEW. The project was made possible by support from INN, with additional support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. For more stories visit hospitals.iowawatch.org

For example, the organization GROW sets up meetings over Zoom, a video conferencing app, to help those in rural areas experiencing mental health issues.And more than a dozen farm bureau managers in Illinois have taken mental health first aid classes that help people recognize signs of distress. Harry Brockus — the chief executive officer of Carle Hoopeston and Carle Richland in Central Illinois, a collection of hospitals that serves 41 mostly rural counties — said there is a physician shortage across the country and recruitment to rural areas is an even bigger challenge. 

“We do not offer the amenities that physicians are looking for,” he said, “such as shopping, schools and different entertainment venues.” 

Other challenges in rural areas, such as transportation, housing and access to healthy food, can make rural healthcare costs inefficient and unaffordable, Brockus said. 

This has left rural America in a bind when it comes to care for mental health.

mental health care

Podcast: Addressing The Midwest’s Mental Health Care Resource Shortage

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This podcast of an original IowaWatch Connection radio report lets those in the Midwest U.S. trying to attract the necessary resources to meet mental health care demand in flood-stricken regions tell you about the problem. It includes one health care center that is trying to address the health care worker shortage head-on with a full-time recruiter.

mental health care

Dealing With The Stigma Of Seeking Mental Health Care

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A stigma exists in agricultural communities when it comes to seeking mental healthcare. Moreover, Kyle Godwin, who recently researched patterns in farmer suicide for his University of Iowa School of Public Health master’s thesis, said his research data might suggest that doing anything to improve farmer mental health care will be difficult unless something is done to end this stigma. Paradoxically, Godwin’s research showed that in regions of Iowa that had a higher saturation of mental healthcare professionals, there were more farmer suicides, not less. “Of course, naturally, you want to think that the places with mental health centers are going to have lower suicide rates, and studies have found that with the general population, that a higher proportion of healthcare providers and mental healthcare providers have generally related to lower suicide rates,” Godwin, who grew up on an Iowa farm, said in an IowaWatch interview. “But then I think we have to remember that for when we’re talking about farmers… just in rural areas, in general, I should say, you know, stigma may play a more prominent role.”

Many mental healthcare providers IowaWatch spoke with pointed to stigma as a major roadblock when trying to treat farmers.

election year legislature

Water Quality, Mental Health At Forefront In 2018 Iowa Legislature

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Priorities at the 2018 Iowa General Assembly that started in Jan. 8 will clash, state legislative leaders said. Even when they don’t clash, there’s a question of how the state will pay for programming. At least agreement exists that two topics — water quality and mental health care — should get a lot of attention in the first part of the session, this IowaWatch Connection radio report explains.  

Government & Politics

Iowa Mental Health Care Review Pending, But No Criteria Yet

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No set criteria exist yet to gauge whether or not a redesign of how Iowa delivers mental health treatment, which included the controversial closing of two mental health institutes June 30, will be as beneficial to Iowans as hoped, Gov. Terry Branstad said in an IowaWatch interview.