Kentucky
For some Kentucky farmers dealing with stress can be unbearable. One group is working to give them hope.
Kentucky farmers are the driving force behind the state’s $8 billion agriculture industry. But for some farmers, the stress and isolation of life on the farm can be overwhelming.
Between 2004 and 2017, there were109 documented cases of Kentucky farmers taking their own lives. According to research by the University of Kentucky, farmers are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than those in the general population. Farmers who are 64 years and older are at the highest risk.
For Kentucky farmers who oversee the nearly 70,000 farms across the commonwealth, factors including financial stress, a lack of access to mental health services, and the inability to get away from a job can contribute to mental health problems.
“24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year”
Tonya Cherry and her family own and operate Cherry Farms, on the border of Allen and Barren counties in southern Kentucky. A normal day for the Cherry’s begins with the sunrise and usually doesn’t end until well past dark.
Tonya Cherry said the success of their operation comes from these long days, which can sometimes stretch to 14 hours a day, with very few days off. It’s different from your standard day job.
“If you have a nine-to-five job, when you come home at 5:30, you really don’t have to think about your job until the next day,” Cherry said. “Farming is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, regardless.”
The Cherrys currently raise USDA-certified beef and pork. In the past, they’ve harvested tobacco, corn, and soybeans. They recently transitioned from a dairy farm to livestock, which was a difficult decision for the family, given their start as dairy farmers. The transition was necessary for the farm to survive, but that decision added to the family’s stress.
Cherry said there were always financial risks when making decisions related to crop harvest. For example, she said their farm could have taken a massive financial hit if they had not recouped their investment on tobacco they sold.
“Whenever we’d go to sell tobacco, you’d worked really hard, you borrowed money all year long, Cherry said. “We’d be out $100,000-$150,000 before we ever took it to sell it. There’s always stress in farming. There’s always a risk.”
But for all the misgivings that come with life on the farm, Tonya and her family also say they have an overwhelming sense of pride about what they do.
When you live where you work, it’s hard to have work/life balance
But for some farmers, that pride can also prevent them from opening up about the stress of the profession, and the sense of isolation and depression that can sink in when you live and work on the farm and things seem inescapable. Tonya says it can sometimes be unbearable.
“Farmers are never going to tell you that something’s bad,” Cherry said. “They’re going to hold it in and sometimes they’re not going to tell their family. They’re going to handle that themselves. I know that there are farmers who commit suicide and I understand that.”
Talking about anxiety and depression can be hard for anyone, but that seems especially true for members of the farming community who might not have access to mental health services due to living in more rural areas.
Kim Link, the Director of Rural Health at Western Kentucky University and a psychiatric nurse practitioner, said a prevailing mentality among many in the farming community is that you shouldn’t talk about your problems or struggles. It’s a stigma that she said can lead to bigger issues.
“Farmers have some unique stressors that the general population may not have,” Link said. “They really have no work-life balance because they pretty much live where they work.”
Link said her practice has seen a recent uptick in farmers seeking attention for mental health issues, something she said is encouraging. “In the practice here within Warren County we are getting a lot of referrals from outside counties and sometimes two of three counties over,” Link said. “So we are definitely seeing the need for people to get the help.”
But it also shows that more resources might be needed in rural areas where an entire county might only have one physician, according to Link.
“It’s good that people are getting services but we now just realizing that, ‘hey we need more people to help give these services,’” Link said.
Link and Tonya Cherry both point to a group that’s working to bring more accessible programs for physical and mental health to farmers and their families, a statewide coalition called Raising Hope.
Affecting more people in a positive way
Raising Hopebegan in 2019 by Susan Jones, a professor emeritus at Western Kentucky University, and Cheryl Witt, a healthcare provider and professor at the University of Louisville.
Jones said early conversations with farmers within the region revealed a majority had dealt with suicide. “It was in three counties, two in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and over a third of those individuals had known someone who had died from suicide,” Jones said.
They started Raising Hope and began attending farmer’s conventions across the state to provide health screenings and just generally listening and getting to know farmers. The group also passes out tokens of solidarity to farmers to let them know they are seen and appreciated. Since its start, the organization has grown to over a dozen staff members and began receiving state funding through the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell said in the short time the organization has been around they’ve created a positive impact in Kentucky agriculture.
“Mental health in agriculture and farmers is really sensitive, so the main thing with Raising Hope is just being able to communicate and talk about mental health issues,” Shell said. “At the Department of Agriculture, we house Raising Hope and it’s something we’re trying to professionalize so that we can get into more places and affect more people in a positive way.”
The group has created a public awareness campaign and started a program to train community members who interact with farmers most often on what a mental health crisis looks like. They also started mental health assistance and financial services for farmers through the 988 phone line. The group says it’s helped dozens of farmers reach life-saving mental health services.
Jones said that while the stigma surrounding mental health still exists, the group’s efforts to reach farmers are starting to create meaningful change.
“I had one gentleman when I interviewed him said, ‘It was not until the health care provider leaned forward and said ‘what else is going on with you,’ and he said the way he said it tore the dam down and all the emotions came out.”
Tonya Cherry said her family has used the group’s free health screenings, received flu shots, and spoken to, and assisted, members of Raising Hope. She knows others in the farming community who have as well. Cherry said it was a personal message after a particularly hard decision that made the biggest impact.
“One of the ladies with Raising Hope sent me a Facebook message, ‘Hey, hang in there. I know it can be tough,’ and I was just like, ‘Wow.’ That just meant a whole lot that she reached out,” Cherry said.
To some, a message over social media might not seem like much. But for Cherry, knowing that she and her family weren’t alone on the farm gave her hope.
One week ago, I wrote that Kentucky needed to show us something against Gonzaga. Unfortunately, it did, in a bad way. The Cats’ 35-point loss to the Bulldogs was their fourth to a ranked team this year. It was a performance so abysmal that the team got booed off the floor at halftime. Ever since, BBN has been in a tailspin, uncertainty about the program’s short-and long-term future hanging over the Bluegrass like a thick fog.
Kentucky has already gotten back in the win column, beating NC Central by 36 on Tuesday night; however, the true test of whether or not the Cats have reached rock bottom is Saturday vs. Indiana. The Hoosiers are 8-2, losing to Minnesota and Louisville last week. They rebounded from the 87-78 loss to the No. 6 Cards by routing Penn State 113-72 on Tuesday, thanks in large part to 44 points from Lamar Wilkerson, who picked Indiana over Kentucky out of the transfer portal this past April.
Both Kentucky and Indiana fell out of the AP and Coaches Polls this week, hovering near each other in the group of “others receiving votes.” KenPom ranks Kentucky No. 20 and Indiana No. 21. It gives the Cats a 4-point edge in Saturday’s game, while BetMGM goes a half-point higher at 4.5.
Thank goodness this one’s at Rupp because it’s a must-win, in more ways than one.
Resume
Let’s start with the most basic: the schedule. It may feel premature to start worrying about the NCAA Tournament, but we’re 10 games in, one-third of the way through the regular season, and Kentucky still doesn’t have a good win, going 0-4 in said opportunities. The highest-ranked team the Cats have beaten so far is Valparaiso, which ranks No. 191 in the NET rankings. All of Kentucky’s wins are in Quad 4, all of its losses in Quad 1. Quad 1 losses don’t hurt you a ton, but at some point, you have to pick up some meaningful wins to offset them.
The Cats have two more chances to pick up a Quad 1 win before SEC play begins: vs. Indiana and St. John’s. Over half of Kentucky’s conference games are in Quad 1; before starting that gauntlet, we need to see that the Cats are capable of winning one. Of the two coming up, beating Indiana in Rupp feels more manageable than Mark Pope taking down his old coach, Rick Pitino, and St. John’s next weekend in Atlanta.
Lamar Wilkerson
Much has been said about Kentucky’s struggles with recruiting this week. Most of that conversation has centered around high school recruiting, not the transfer portal, but Lamar Wilkerson is one of the biggest portal targets Mark Pope missed on this past offseason. Kentucky felt so good about landing him that Mark Pope took him to the winner’s circle at Keeneland. Instead, Wilkerson went to Indiana, the Hoosiers sweetening the pot at the last minute.
On Tuesday, Wilkerson set an Indiana record with 10 three-pointers in the win over Penn State. He is averaging 18.8 points and 3.5 made threes per game this season. There were other whiffs for Pope and his staff during the offseason, but Wilkerson will take center stage at Rupp tomorrow night, at a time when Kentucky’s $22 million team is the laughing stock of college basketball.
Please don’t let him get hot.
Lock in for the 2025 Kentucky Basketball season with KSR Plus! We’re giving you behind-the-scenes intel you won’t find anywhere else. Join the most passionate online community in the BBN during Mark Pope’s second season.
Fan fatigue
You don’t need me to tell you BBN is unhappy. The boos in Nashville were ugly proof of the unrest in the fanbase now. Concerns about recruiting and the school’s partnership with JMI, as outlined by Jacob Polacheck and Jack Pilgrim earlier this week, aren’t helping. Mark Pope struck a different tone on Tuesday night, using his bench to send messages to Kam Williams, Jaland Lowe, and Brandon Garrison, and biting back anger afterward as he talked about how his team continues to fall short of the standard. On the player side, Otega Oweh seemed to step up as a leader, scoring a season-high 21 points and insisting all is well in the locker room during interviews, one of which took place with his teammates surrounding him.
On Saturday, we get to see if those baby steps of progress are enough to avoid a fifth loss. Kentucky has already lost one home game this season, last week vs. North Carolina. Given all that’s happened since, there might be boos if the Cats pick up a second tomorrow night.
Fear of becoming Indiana
Indiana used to be one of Kentucky’s biggest rivals; for fans of a certain age, the Hoosiers may still be. Over the past 20 or so years, Indiana has faded to irrelevance. The Hoosiers haven’t gone to a Final Four since 2002. There’s a reason they put Christian Watford’s buzzer-beater vs. Kentucky in 2011 on a popcorn box; they haven’t had much else to celebrate.
As Kentucky fans, we’ve made our fair share of jokes about Indiana, but it’s not quite as funny now that the Cats haven’t gone to the Final Four in a decade, won an SEC regular-season championship since 2019-20, or an SEC Tournament title since 2017-18. For all our hopes that Mark Pope would be the one to turn it around, Kentucky still hasn’t won a big game this season. As Mark Story outlined in the Herald-Leader, Kentucky could be on the path to becoming the next Indiana, which makes Saturday’s game even bigger. With this being the first game in a four-year series, it could be an annual reminder if things keep trending in this direction.
So, please, Kentucky, win this basketball game. You can make it my early Christmas gift.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Kentucky lawmaker is taking the fight for pharmacists to Washington.
Representative James Comer introduced the Pharmacists Fight Back Act on Thursday.
Kentucky already has a similar law in place that WKYT Investigates’ Kristen Kennedy has been following as the state works to get the law enforced.
Kentucky pharmacists may now get help on the federal level.
“Rarely does a day go by without hearing from my constituents in Kentucky who are struggling under the weight of soaring prescription drug costs,” Comer said. “The questions I’m consistently asked are, ‘why? Who is benefiting from the system? Why isn’t it patients?’ My response is the same each time. It’s the PBMs.”
Federal bill targets pharmacy benefit managers
Comer says pharmacy benefit managers have outgrown their role in healthcare. State legislators agreed when they passed Senate Bill 188 last year. The law was supposed to increase reimbursement rates for pharmacies and keep PBMs from steering patients to affiliated pharmacies.
The regulations are similar to what Comer wants to do on a federal level.
“Our oversight investigation, which culminated in a report last year with our findings and recommendations, found PBMs have largely operated in the dark,” Comer said. “PBMs have abused their positions as middlemen to line their own pockets by retaining rebates and fees, undermine our community pharmacists and pass along costs to patients at the pharmacy counter. It’s unacceptable, and Congress has a responsibility to act.”
If the act becomes law, it would affect pharmacies across the U.S.
Pharmacists in Kentucky are already seeing some advantages with the regulations placed on pharmacy benefit managers, but their biggest complaint is that the law isn’t being enforced.
That could change if the federal government gets involved. The Kentucky Pharmacists Association thinks Frankfort has a responsibility to act on the PBM law that passed in the state. They’re still asking the governor to make sure the Department of Insurance is enforcing the law in place.
Stay informed on investigations like this by checking out our WKYT Investigates page at wkyt.com/investigates.
Copyright 2025 WKYT. All rights reserved.
MUHLENBERG, Ky. (WFIE) – Kentucky officials says there are multiple people injured in a three-car accident on Western Kentucky Parkway.
According to a post made by the Central City Fire Department, three vehicles were involved in a crash between the 64 and 65 mile markers eastbound of the parkway.
They say both the eastbound and westbound lanes are closed at this time. The closure should last around 3 hours.
Two people were extricated from a vehicle. Four adults and three juveniles are being taken to the hospital. No update has been given on their conditions.
They say a mass casualty incident was declared, and Ohio County Fire and EMS were called to the scene due to the number of patients.
We will update you when we learn more.
Copyright 2025 WFIE. All rights reserved.
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