Assessing Mental Health Concerns of Spanish-Speaking Dairy Farm Workers

ABSTRACT

Background: Hispanic dairy farm workers have risk factors for mental health concerns. There is insufficient study of their mental health needs.

Methods: We conducted focus groups at five farms. We quantified the burden of depressive symptoms with Patient Health Questionnaires (PHQ-2 and PHQ-9) during three seasons of mobile clinics on farm sites.

Results: Focus groups revealed that sources of stress included working conditions, language barriers, fear of deportation, and distance from family. Depression screening found that the rate of mild depressive symptoms ranged from 0% to 3.2%. No individual scored higher than mild depression.

Discussion: Rates of depressive symptoms were substantially lower than in the general US population, which may be explained by a population that self-selects for resilience. Our mixed qualitative and quantitative data acquisition provided us a more robust and comprehensive understanding of our population’s mental health concerns than using one method alone.

KEYWORDS:

• Dairy farm workers
• depression
• Hispanic
• mental health
• Spanish-speaking

Acknowledgments

We thank the farm workers for their participation and the farm owners for their support in the project. Special thank you to Little Rivers Health Care for their dedication to improving the health of migrant and Spanish-speaking farm workers and their support of Project Salud. We would like to thank Deborah J. Johnson MHA who played a key role in supporting our data collection and analysis. Thank you to the Dartmouth anthropology department, and in particular Elizabeth A. Carpenter-Song PhD, for guidance in conducting focus groups. The study was conducted with the guidance of the Dartmouth Primary Care Cooperative Research Network faculty, based at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, Department of Community & Family Medicine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

NIH Grant from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) T32AT003997 (Hecht/Adler) NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health [T32AT003997 (Hecht/Adler)].