Mental health is something that doesn’t get talked about much in the farming community. Why? Mainly because the stigma of “farmers are tough, we don’t talk about those things” still hasn’t completely gone away. Things are a lot more open now than they ever were, but we still have some work to do. There’s a mental health network in Wisconsin that’s trying to fix that issue and help farmers.
The Farmer Angel Network is a group out of Sauk County that welcomes all farmers and others who are struggling with mental health. Randy Roecker’s one of the founders of this network. He wanted to create a place where it’s easier for the ag community to share and help each other. “You know farmers, we’re just kind of proud and you just don’t want to open up and talk much about your personal problems, but that’s what we’re trying to do now, is to make it tokay to talk about this and let people know it’s okay to talk,” Roecker explained.
Even though the group has their meetings throughout Sauk County, Roecker mentioned how they have farmers from all over the state come and join them. “We’ve had people drive two and three hours away to come up to our meetings,” Roecker said. A normal meeting for them has a crowd of anywhere from 25 – 50 people, they have a lunch, and bring in a guest speaker to talk to the group.
One main reason Roecker’s so passionate about the Farmer Angel Network is because he went through his fair share of mental health issues. “When I was going through my own struggles…I just wanted to drop off the face of the earth because I thought everybody was talking about me and it was just awful.” Roecker went on to say, “I never thought that depression would happen to me but when I hit rock bottom, that was it for me. I mean, I was on so many different medications and therapists and doctors and hospital stays, and I felt that if I did something to myself that it will just affect my family worse than going through this depression, and that’s really what happened with me that turned my life around.”
Roecker wants to make sure that other farmers don’t have to go through what he did a decade ago. He understands what it’s like to feel as if there’s nowhere to turn. He knows that empty feeling and doesn’t want any other farmers to feel that way. He wants those who are struggling to know that they DO have a place to go, it’s called the Farmer Angel Network.
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