Rural Minds Founder and Chairman, Jeff Winton, featured in The Invisible Americans Podcast – Episode 15: Rural Mental Health with Jeff Winton & Escaping Poverty with Dapper Dan

Brooks Winton died by suicide at 28 years old. He was Jeff Winton’s beloved nephew, and this tragedy inspired Jeff to found the nonprofit Rural Minds. Both Jeff and Brooks come from a long line of dairy farmers in upstate New York in an extremely small community of only 500 people. Some members of that community urged Jeff’s family to lie about Brooks’ cause of death. Though perhaps well-meaning, Jeff’s mother refused to be silenced, and they opened up this important conversation around mental health issues in rural communities.

Rates of mental illness were already high in the U.S., but the pandemic intensified everything: Illness, loneliness, job loss, grief, and other stressors related to COVID induced a nationwide rise in anxiety and depression. As difficult as the pandemic has been, however, it hit some groups far harder than others. It exacerbated social and economic inequities already known to drive and sustain poor mental health among marginalized communities. Those in rural America, already less likely to receive mental health care than those in urban areas, were particularly hard hit. So were people of color, who are more likely to be hospitalized and die from COVID and are less likely to receive mental health care compared with white people. And for those who were unhoused or formerly incarcerated, the consequences have been profound.