UNICOI, Tenn. – An East Tennessee FFA member is raising awareness about farmer mental health after seeing the impact of Hurricane Helene on her community.

Abigail Petterson, now a freshman at the University of Tennessee, was a senior and Erwin FFA member at Unicoi County High School in northeast Tennessee when Hurricane Helene hit two years ago.

Hurricane Helene was a catastrophic Category 4 hurricane that struck Florida’s Big Bend region on Sept. 26, 2024, causing more than 250 deaths and widespread destruction across the southeastern United States. Its path moved inland across four southern states, including Tennessee. The extreme rainfall and flooding devastated the Nolichucky River and Unicoi County in northeast Tennessee.

That tragic storm led this FFA regional reporter and her classmates to assist in cleanup efforts.

“The first few days after the hurricane, members of my high school FFA chapter went out to help farmers in our community,” Petterson said. “They were so overwhelmed with everything. They were in shock. With the farmers, this wasn’t just their home, it was how they get their food, this is their entire life. They spent their entire life on this farm, and it was just washed away.”

Right after that experience, Petterson put together an agriscience fair project surveying farmers in the region about their mental health before and after the flooding.

“It illustrated to me the mental health crisis among farmers,” she said.

Petterson is currently working on a new project and hopes to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health. She’s using her voice to advocate for farmers’ mental health. What started with helping local residents after a natural disaster has grown into a passion for raising awareness and sharing resources to support the ag community.

“I’ve always been concerned about mental health of farmers but the deciding factor in performing my research was when Hurricane Helene hit the area and seeing the devastation that farmers in my own community faced,” Petterson said. “I learned then what they were facing and realized how huge of a problem faced the farming community. And through my research I learned of the stigma surrounding mental health. I really wanted to help my rural community and FFA gave me the perfect platform to do that.”

Petterson lives in a rural area of Erwin and has neighboring farmers who were devastated by the storm.

“One local farmer lost thousands of bales of hay and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, and most of his land is unrecoverable,” she said. “And even though it’s been two years, he and other farmers have a long way to go.”

Petterson surveyed 50 farmers in East Tennessee about their mental health before and after the hurricane.

“My first year of research I studied what affect the hurricane had on their mental health and I discovered the most common factor was their financial struggles,” she said. “After that research, I dove into the understanding of psychiatry and mental health help that is available. I’ve learned that 58 percent of those surveyed are still struggling with mental health issues. And only 50 percent of those surveyed said the damage recovery effort helped them recover. They said rebuilding isn’t enough. That told me we need to rebuild the mental damage as well. I wanted to bring awareness of this everywhere. Rural Americans everywhere need resources to get the mental health help they so desperately need at times.”

Psychiatry, Petterson admits, is in her future.

“I wanted to be a psychiatrist long before Hurricane Helene occurred, but the hurricane gave me that spark, realizing that research was something I wanted to do and made me realize what I wanted to do in life. Eventually, I’d like to have my own practice in the rural community and help people. I see how they desperately need it.”

Petterson credited FFA for pointing her life in this direction.

“FFA has given me the platform and ability to do this research but more importantly it’s given me the courage to do so,” she said. “My freshman year in high school I was very shy and my FFA adviser pushed me to study Prepared Public Speaking. That enabled me to do my mental health research and talk with farmers. FFA not only gave me the platform but gave me the courage.”

Petterson is now using social media to address the stigma around farmers’ mental health and raise awareness of available resources.

“There are so many misconceptions about mental health,” Petterson said. “Many farmers think that mental health issues for them don’t exist and it’s vital to let them see that it’s OK not to be OK. That’s the number one idea that I try to get across. It’s simply about them knowing we’re here to help you in any way possible. It’s not the mindset of ‘there’s something wrong with you’ or ‘you need to be fixed’.

“It’s not really in farmers to ask for help as they want to figure things out themselves,” she said. “A lot of farmers don’t believe in having mental health issues and it’s really about getting over that hurdle and the best way of getting over that hurdle are resources that are out there to support them through this problem.”