“It's one thing after another, after another”: A participatory and systems-based exploration of farmer mental health and climate change

Abstract

Because of their closeness to and dependence on the land, climate change will disproportionately impact farmer mental health. Despite local and global reliance on US farmers' wellbeing, there are limited regional studies elucidating the impacts of our changing climate on their mental health. Scholars have argued for systems-based and participatory approaches to understand the contextual factors that interact and influence the mental health impacts of climate change. This study addresses this gap by leveraging qualitative data from community stakeholders and applying a systems perspective to illuminate and better understand how climate change impacts farmer mental health. Using thematic analysis, themes and patterns were identified among transcribed interview recordings of both farmers and local mental health providers. Findings illustrate how weather variability empirically connected to climate change is a primary source of adverse mental health outcomes among farmers. However, weather variability was one of multiple drivers impacting farmer mental health and is included within a broad series of increasingly uncontrollable and unpredictable stressors. These drivers are felt through context-specific cultural and systemic factors that both serve to amplify and diminish mental health outcomes. This study builds on the existing literature on climate change and farmer mental health by providing a systems perspective on how these impacts are felt through various contextual factors relevant to farmers’ lives. Findings reinforce the call for systems-based and participatory approaches when looking to not only empirically map the pathways from climate change to farmer mental health, but in also identifying holistic intervention strategies.