By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
ST. BONAVENTURE — Rural Minds founder and chairman Jeffrey Winton of Mayville in Chautauqua County is building connections for mental health services across rural America.
Winton was the keynote speaker Wednesday at Trauma Symposium 2024 presented by the Cattaraugus County Trauma Informed Coalition in the Dresser-Rand Auditorium at the John J. Murphy Professional Building.
The seeds for Rural Minds were planted on Sept. 3, 2012, with the death of his nephew, Winton said.
A Chautauqua County native, Winton’s life changed along with the rest of his family 12 years ago when his 28-year-old nephew Brooks, the father of three-year-old twins, took his own life.
The family’s pastor suggested they not discuss that Brooks committed suicide and suggested they might want to say it was a heart attack. Winton’s mother, who considered Brooks like a son to her, said no. “She said ‘This is going to stop with my family. This has been happening too often,’” Wintold the audience of about 150.
His mother gave the eulogy at the funeral. Afterward, other farm families stayed for two hours to share their stories of relatives with mental health problems taking their lives.
A successful communications and corporate affairs leader in pharmaceutical, biotech, animal health, agricultural and consumer companies, he now devotes much of his time and efforts traveling around the country to connect rural Americans to mental health services and resources through Rural Minds.
Most of all, Winton invites people to share their stories of mental health challenges in rural America. Not only are there fewer mental health professionals to talk to and seek treatment, but rural areas have a rate of mental illness that is twice that of urban areas, he said.
“There are 46 million people in rural America who have no national advocates fighting for them,” Winton said.
The mission of Rural Minds is to serve as an informal voice for mental health services in rural America, Winton said.
“We are trying to eliminate the silence, the suffering and the stigma of mental health,” he said. “We were raised to think we could do this on our own. We were taught that mental illness is a character flaw.”Winton said, “No one wants to talk about depression or alcoholism disorder.”
Rural America has higher rates of digression and suicide, Winton said. Why? “Because no one wants their pickup truck seen outside the local clinic.”
Farmers are twice as likely to die by suicide as any other occupation. Winton said. Second are veterinarians. “And the suicide rate is growing at a faster rate among rural youth,” he added.
“We need more mental health services,” he declared. But there is also a shortage of primary care physicians in rural areas, 28% don’t have broadband and 81% of rural counties don’t have a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
Coming back to rural Chautauqua County where his family runs a dairy farm, Winton is aware of the inequalities between urban and rural America — especially mental health services.
The rural experience includes a lack of trust, transportation issues, and the difficulty of getting an appointment with a mental health professional when there are so few available, Winton said.
For the past two years, Rural Minds has been focusing on agriculture and rural communities, he said. It is expanding to include Amish and Indigenous communities. Next they’ll look at timber and fishing communities, which have similar rates of mental illness and depression.
Above all, people suffering mental illness need an advocate. Winton is an advocate for his younger brother who suffers from mental illness.
Rural Minds works not only with small non profit groups, but with corporations who are interested in helping people who are often their customers and buy their products. He sees them as partnerships to improve mental health in rural America.
Winton has been attending meetings at Grange halls, Cooperative Extensions and churches where he has been invited to talk about the mental health issues facing rural America. Mostly he likes to listen to peoples’ stories. These stories increase awareness of mental illness and help focus resources in rural areas, he said.
The group’s website at ruralminds.org, as a number of resources available including webinars, Winton said.
He also encouraged farmers who are struggling with mental health issues to contact FarmNet, a service provided by New York state and Cornell University. The service began by offering financial advice to farmers, but soon found that many were suffering from mental illness.
Now FarmNet has added trained counselors to the financial advisors it offers for free to farmers.
Winton offered to stay in touch with the Trauma Informed Coalition. “I hope we can keep in touch and partner with you.”
During a short period for questions, Winton said it often takes a personal experience for elected officials to take the right approach to mental health issues.
He often comes right out and asks elected officials what their position is on rural mental health. With millions of people with mental illness, “it should not be political.”
The daylong conference included several workshops including suicide prevention, healing the mind and body and Becoming a Trauma Responsive Agency for Your Customers.
Trauma Symposium 2024 was sponsored by Connecting Communities in Action (CCA), the United Way, the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York and the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work.
