Computer Generated Presentation with Script

Wilmes, E.*¹,
¹ Extension Educator, UMN Extension-Stearns County, St Cloud, MN, 56301

I prepared the attached PowerPoint presentation in response to several requests I received from colleagues for informational resources around the topic of farm stress and farmer mental health. In April 2019, our Dean of Extension created the Rural Stress Task Force, naming me its Director. Part of my role as Director has been presenting on this topic statewide, and supporting the efforts of other Educators offering stress-related programming.

The response to these efforts has been overwhelming. The requests for farm stress programming have been steadily rolling in. In an attempt to equip myself and my colleagues with the same information, I created this PowerPoint. It gives a solid introduction to the topic and covers the basics of stressors, self-care, recognizing stress, addressing stress, and available resources. I have made this PowerPoint available to my fellow county-based Extension Educators and any other Extension staff that would like to use it. It has been presented at Private Pesticide Applicator workshops, County Crop Days, forage workshops, beef and dairy meetings, and rural mental health-centric programs by myself and several of my colleagues. The audience at these programs is typically producers and/or agribusiness professionals. By encouraging farmers and others to think about their mental health, I hope to open up conversations about this important topic.

When creating a PowerPoint, I focus on clean, simple slides that function as visual aids. I want to provide the audience with a baseline of information, but not overwhelm them with reading to a point that they are too distracted to listen. Especially on this topic, I thought it was important to keep the slides simple and the notes well-organized as I knew this PowerPoint would be given by someone other than myself. This presentation has become a wonderful resource for myself and colleagues to use in order to address this important issue in our various types of programming.