Understanding and addressing psychological distress experienced by farmers, from the perspective of rural financial counsellors

Objective: To explore rural financial counsellors' experiences interacting with psychologically distressed farmers and identify contextually appropriate methods to maintain their own well-being and link farmers to psychological supports, within their existing roles. Setting: Rural, regional and remote Australia. Participants: Fifty rural financial counsellors participated. They worked across 6 Australian states/territories. Design: Individual semi-structured telephone interviews were audio-recorded with consent. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. Themes were identified using an essentialist, bottom-up approach. Results: Forty-six themes emerged relating to the 5 topics explored: (a) how to recognise distress in farmers (eg inability to focus/make decisions, deterioration in presentation/organisation, anger, blaming); (b) impact of farmers' psychological distress on the financial case management process (eg slows, disrupts or stops it, negatively impacts counsellor well-being); (c) strategies for working effectively with distressed farmers (eg flexibility, open-ended questions, listening to story, simplicity, instilling hope); (d) referral of distressed farmers to psychological support (eg willing if tried themselves/positive reports, lack of local rural face-to-face services, stigma and lack of understanding of importance challenging, a farming focus and support from family/ community assists); and (e) strategies to maintain their own well-being (eg compartmentalising, exercise, supervision). Conclusion: Rural financial counsellors play an important role by recognising signs of distress in farmers and referring them to appropriate psychological supports. However, this is a demanding role and ensuring counsellors have appropriate services to refer farmers to, and support with their own well-being, is imperative. Refereed/Peer-reviewed