Rural Minds Partners with Cornell for New Online Course | News, sports, jobs

A new online course has been launched by local nonprofit Rural Minds in collaboration with Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Submitted photo

Rural Minds, a local nonprofit focused on mental health in agriculture and rural areas, has partnered with Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine to release a new online course that launched in mid-September.

The course, titled “Mental Health and Suicide Prevention in Rural America,” is designed for veterinarians, veterinary students and agricultural professionals. It aims to provide learners with practical support strategies and resources to address mental health challenges in rural communities. Although the course is aimed primarily at veterinarians and agricultural professionals, it is free and open to anyone interested.

Jeff Winton, founder and chairman of Rural Minds, said this partnership with Cornell came about through his own involvement with the college as an alumni, and as he served as a volunteer on the Dean’s Advisory Board, he saw the common interest between him and the college Cornell Veterinary School Dean Lorin Warnick Discovers Rural Mental Health.

Winton added that Cornell University has 13 affiliated colleges, including the veterinary school, and that Warnick believed the course was necessary. The two organizations have been working together on this for several years and was officially launched as a free course on September 18th. Winton said the course was free because Warnick, a veterinarian from a rural area in Montana, understood the need for the course.

“One of the reasons we thought this was important is our ongoing concern about mental illness and suicide among veterinarians, farmers and ranchers,” Winton said. “Farmers and ranchers are twice as likely to die by suicide as other professions, and the same is true for veterinarians. Of all healthcare professions, vets are twice as likely to commit suicide than others, and one in six will consider it at some point.”

Winton said veterinarians are an important part of any farm and he said Rural Minds cares about the profession and the role they play. He described veterinarians as the “eyes and ears” of the farming community, adding that when his father was alive, he would have asked the veterinarian about medical problems rather than his doctor because his father trusted the veterinarian so much.

The online course is not just for veterinary students and is being distributed to schools across the state and country. Winton said the course will train these students to be the eyes and ears of the farming community, but also help them deal with their own stressors. Veterinarians are constantly called to euthanize animals, and Winton cited a specific example of a presentation given to poultry veterinarians who then told him that they were extremely stressed because they had to euthanize thousands of birds due to bird flu. He said being a veterinarian is a job that can require someone to be on duty 24 hours a day.

The new online course can help veterinarians receive a lot of current and practical information to help them manage their own stress and help them help clients on farms or in small animal clinics.

“Animals can trigger a lot of emotions, both really happy and really sad,” Winton said. “Veterinarians are there either when people are really happy in the beginning or really sad when their animals reach the end of their lives, and this course can help them help their clients in their practice.”

Winton emphasized that the course is free, which he said is not common in similar courses, and that it can help those who take it learn what to do and what not to do in certain situations teaching them how to be with someone in that moment. The course is also only an hour long and offers learners the ability to start and stop as needed, as well as the ability to return to parts of the course at will.

Videos will be shown throughout the course featuring Winton, Cornell’s dean, NY Farm Net staff and trained professionals who have worked to make the course available to all agricultural communities, not just veterinarians. Winton said that not only has the course already been distributed in the United States, but it has also reached parts of the Middle East because he reached out from there to someone who had seen the course.

“We are excited and proud of what we have accomplished and we were able to launch it in September, Suicide Awareness Month, which we felt was timely,” Winton said. “We hope this is something that can evolve and be used for many years to come.”

Plans to further develop the course are already in progress, including possibly a refresher course. Winton said this is just the beginning of the course and he hopes other organizations such as 4-H, FFA and local churches will pick it up and use it as a basis for their meetings. Winton said there is also the possibility of having the course translated into other languages, especially since many members of the agricultural community speak Spanish or Asian.

Updates and new developments to the course can be found on the Rural Minds website, Ruralminds.org, which also publishes webinars from time to time, which can also be found in the archives section of the website. For regular updates, Rural Minds can also be found on social media.

While Rural Minds is about to celebrate its third anniversary and Winton said they are still relatively new, he said they are excited about the progress they have already made so far. He said that sometimes giving people the opportunity to talk about their problems and tell their stories can make a big difference, and let them know they are not alone. He also praised the 988 hotline, saying that sometimes it was the only lifeline people had.

“We’re relatively new, but we’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far,” Winton said. “Someone commits suicide every 11 minutes, so we can’t rest and we have to keep going and move forward. We will continue to expand these partnerships and programs. We still have a lot to do and a lot more people to reach, but I’m excited because we’re making progress.”

The course, “Mental Health Awareness and Suicide Prevention in Rural America,” can be found at ecornell.cornell.edu/custom/rural-mental-health/.