Getting Veterinarians Involved in Rural Mental Health

Founder and Chairman, Jeff Winton started Rural Minds three years ago following a family tragedy when his 28 year old nephew, a father of twins, died by suicide. This heartbreaking event highlighted the importance of mental health awareness in farming communities.

“There's not much happening as it relates to the 46 million people that live in rural America regarding mental health and suicide prevention. I think we're making some progress, but when I started calling around to various other nonprofit organizations to see what they were doing in rural areas, there was silence on the other end of the phone and an admission that they were more focused on urban and suburban people, because, quite frankly, they didn't know anything about rural Americans.”

Rural Minds recently partnered with Cornell University to develop a new program focused on veterinarians.

“We're very proud of this program, and that is, is it helps train veterinary students and veterinarians to be the ears and the eyes of the community, because they are out and about on farms and ranches. They are meeting with farmers and ranchers on a daily basis, and they are the ones that, in many cases, farmers trust this.”

The new program is free and is available@ruralminds.org