The Water Table

Facing it Together: Mental Health in Agriculture

• Jamie Duininck • Episode 143

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0:00 | 31:49

After a near-fatal battle with depression, Mark Meier got the help he needed to recover. That experience inspired him to co-found the Face It Foundation and help other men find connection, understanding, and healing through peer support groups. 

Mark and Jamie talk about the challenges men face when it comes to addressing mental health issues, as well as the negative impacts of avoiding those struggles. They also discuss how these challenges can show up for farmers, how rural communities may have some unique benefits when it comes to making connections, and the role of faith in recovery. 

This episode contains content about depression, suicide, and mental health conditions that may be distressing. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the National 988 Crisis Line. Or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

For more information on the Face It Foundation visit:
https://www.faceitfoundation.org/

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - Coping with the ups and downs of ag
02:54 - Mark Meier and the Face It Foundation
03:30 - Mental health crisis leads to new understanding
04:15 - Identifying a connection gap and launching Face It
05:22 - Group support, deep connections, and big impacts
07:02 - Reflecting on generational differences and similarities
09:31 - Isolation, social media, and self-esteem
11:05 - Making connections in rural America
12:30 - Getting support through the Face It Foundation
15:12 - Healing through connection with others
16:16 - How peer support works
17:30 - Partnering with the Masons
18:30 - The role of faith in recovery
19:40 - The costs of disconnection and depression
22:10 - Supporting each other through life’s uncertainties
25:29 - Unique opportunities to connect in rural communities
27:22 - The power of relationships and vulnerability
28:20 - The future of the Face It Foundation

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Mark Meier (00:00):

So many of us men carry around the notion that only we struggle, that only it is us. So when guys start getting together and start being honest with one another, they begin to see they're not alone. It takes way more courage to be honest and vulnerable than it does to shut down and be isolated. As time went on, I really began to see this gap of needing other guys to talk to.

Jamie (00:30):

Well, welcome back to the Water Table Podcast. It's been a while since I've been in this seat and I'm excited to be back here for the start of 2026 and wanted to turn a little different direction today. So many of our podcasts over the last five, six years have been about water quality and agriculture. And last summer in Minnesota, as we had just historic rain events over and over, I started thinking about how challenging farming can be and agriculture can be of how often it changes. Just within a day, things can go from good to not so good or vice versa. And the uncertainty that that's created within our industry and how to cope with that.

(01:15):

And so today, Mark Meier is with me and Mark started the Face It Foundation in 2009. And it's about addressing the gap and the critical gap that there is with men that are struggling with depression and just mental health issues. So wanted to just talk about mental health, depression, but more around how do we cope with life and changes in life within our industry as farming, which is one of the more volatile industries to live in. And yet so many of our people that are in agriculture know no different. That's what they've done their whole life. Their parents did it, their grandparents did it, so they do it and things become more and more challenging as our world changes. So welcome to the podcast, Mark.

Mark Meier (02:04):

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. And when I got the first email from you, I couldn't quite put two and two together initially because it was addressed directly to me and I saw this about the Water Table. So I thought, oh gosh, what do I have to learn now? But I'm happy to be here. Happy to have a conversation.

Jamie (02:20):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and again, I think if I just told somebody that is a listener to the water table, "Hey, we're going to talk about mental health and struggles within men in agriculture and depression," they'd be kind of like, "Why?" But I think once we start, and even how I described it there as we started talking, I think it makes complete sense. So why don't you start just, how did you start the foundation? Why did you start it? What is the problem? And we'll get into some conversation.

Mark Meier (02:52):

Sure, sure. So my background is I've got a master's degree in social work and I'm a clinical social worker by background. But really I started face it 16 years ago, born by and large out of my own experiences with my own mental health challenges. As we sit here today, I've been married for 36 years. I have three great kids. I grew up in what I would perceive to be about as normal of a middle class suburban upbringing here in Minneapolis you could have. I played hockey, I hunt, I fished, my parents were married, I went to college and did all those things. And when I was 35 years old, I found myself in a hospital following a suicide attempt, Jamie. And really the etiology of that was years and years of ignoring my own mental health needs and some of these things that we've already alluded to.

(03:45):

And when I got out of the hospital, I went down, like I said, I was trained as a clinician and I went down the traditional route they told us of medication and therapy and it didn't really help me. And what I realized I was looking for was guys like myself to talk to, guys who had been through this. I mean, you think about farmers, they want to talk to other farmers when the weather goes sideways or when you have too much rain. I mean, we want to talk to people who understand. And so as time went on, I really began to see this gap of needing other guys to talk to. So I launched Face It 16 years ago with another guy up here in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area. And we've grown to, we've got a group in Rochester, we've got a group in Northfield, we've got a group in Duluth, and we've got 24 groups in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area.

(04:37):

We have about 260 men who use our services. And what we do, it's purely peer support. It's guys getting together who support each other. We don't charge them, we don't bill insurance. We've created really this network of men from firefighters and police officers and electricians and I've had farmers and all across the spectrum of what guys do and where they come from to help each other. I mean, it's not a complicated concept that we guys need other people to talk to. And so many of us are either socialized or somehow come to believe that we're responsible for solving all of our own problems. And that's just not a helpful way to go through life.

Jamie (05:21):

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Can you give us a little snippet of like, what does that look like when you connect with somebody or you connect to people that are struggling? What are some of the things that, how do they, often do they get together? Is that in person? What are some of the results of that also?

Mark Meier (05:42):

Yep. Yep, for sure. So the groups that we have, guys join a group and that way they get to know the eight, 10 guys that are in a group. And the connections, it's incredible to me how deep and how quickly they get formed around this idea of so many of us men carry around the notion that only we struggle, that only it is us. We talked to you and I a little bit before we started here about this. We compare ourselves to everybody else. And what we do so often, guys are notorious for doing this. They'll take a look at somebody and they'll compare themselves to them by holding that person and saying, "See, look how great they are. " And they look at only the good things they see and then they turn it on themselves and say, "Yep, see, and I'm a failure because this isn't working or this isn't working." And so when guys start getting together and start being honest with one another, they begin to see they're not alone.

(06:35):

I don't know how many of your listeners will resonate with this, but so many men feel like they are failures. They feel like they've let people down. They feel like they're not doing enough. They feel like there's so much more they should be doing. And in reality, the vast majority of us are really good at what we do. We're good husbands, good fathers, we're good farmers. We're good community members, but so many men kind of walk through this life with this idea of not being enough.

Jamie (07:01):

Do you think that just from your research and your time in this, just really studying mental health, how has it changed from generations ago as far as when you say men feel like they're not enough? Is that something that was the same percentage of men 30 years ago as today? Or do you have any thoughts on that?

Mark Meier (07:24):

My thought is, is we're talking about it more. And my inclination is that guys probably have struggled for a long time with some of this and now it's more to the forefront. What I will say, and I'm a big believer in this, I'm soon to be 59 years old and people of my ilk and generation, we weren't joiners to the same degree, say my father was. I didn't belong to the Knights of Columbus or to the Masons or to the VFW. And I think a lot of guys get disconnected and they get isolated from each other. And so there's more focus on career and you're busy running the kids here and there.

(08:05):

And so you're not spending the same amount of time with guys that they used to. And so I think that it probably feels more prevalent now because we're talking about it more. But I think the things we're talking about are pretty universal across probably time and history, meaning most of us men or women carry some sense of inadequacies or feeling like we need to be doing more.

(08:31):

But as we begin to talk about these things more, I think what's happening, this I have absolutely seen, more and more men are now talking to their kids about this stuff. And I use my own example. My father was a great man. He was kind. He had expectations of me. He was a Navy guy. He was a Korean War vet. He taught me to fish, hunt, camp, all those things, but he never talked to me. He never talked to me about the things ... I was a kid who had a lot of anxiety and I was always perceived myself to be an emotional kid. And it's not that my dad didn't want to talk to me. I think my dad didn't know what to say. And so then I grew up with the idea that there must be something wrong with me, that it's me, I'm the problem.

(09:12):

And it turns out I'm just a guy like most everybody. And so I think what's happening certainly now more is men are talking more to each other, hopefully. And certainly I think guys are paying closer attention to the needs of their sons and children.

Jamie (09:27):

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because I asked that question kind of for a reason and going to ... I assumed that would be your answer around it probably hasn't changed a whole lot, but some of the things have changed like just the isolation and the isolation because of things like social media and we're busier and busier and then we aren't doing stuff in things like, I can't remember, but whether it's associations with other men or groups or whatever. And so then we're going on social media and in our free time. And then what we see on that just exaggerates a problem from the standpoint of what we see. What we see isn't always reality, right?

Mark Meier (10:13):

Right. And I mean, I think that is really a big part of this is I don't want to blame everything on social media, but I'm going to blame a lot of it around social media and our perceptions of what you just said about what people have. Because again, I don't take a quick selfie and post on my ... I don't use any of this stuff, but I don't post on my social media account that I'm having a panic attack and crying, right? You want everyone to see the Christmas tree and all the presents and everybody's smiling. And then like I said, I think there is some human inclination, particularly if we're feeling stressed, compare ourselves to that good moment and then look over at the pile of dirty laundry or what have you that we haven't taken care of and think, oh gosh, see, I can't do anything.

Jamie (10:58):

Yeah. And I didn't really think of this before I got on the podcast, but in some ways I think, yes, I wanted to address this. And yes, I do think that there is an issue with just the uncertainty in agriculture and that there certainly can be there. But on another hand, I think rural America can find itself in a healthier place because there are more connections and there are more in our small towns where the coffee shops and things like that where people get together and they think they're getting together to have coffee, but the outcome of that is the connection and let's talk.

Mark Meier (11:41):

And I think that piece of it, honestly, when I started Face It, my whole goal was just to get guys together. And a big part of what we do at Facebook, we own a retreat center just south of Duluth, and we use this retreat center all the time just to get guys to take a weekend and go be together. And whether that's just clearing paths or building a fire or going for a hike or bird watching or what have you, just getting people to be together. And I'm not going to say that would cure all of society's ills, but if you and I spend more time just getting to know each other and connecting, we tend to feel better about ourselves and we tend to sort of reciprocate back and forth what life challenges are. We work them out together.

Jamie (12:25):

Yeah. Yeah. So you've talked a little bit about what your approach is with getting together and the retreat center. Talk a little bit more about the structure. If somebody gets involved with Face It, what is kind of the obligation or how does it work the best if you're what you're committing to?

Mark Meier (12:45):

Sure. So what we ask guys is if they're going to join a group, we ask that they commit and show up. Our particular groups meet on an every other week basis. So that way, twice a month you're committing two hours in which you get together with a group of guys. And we always say, as much as we love to lament the Vikings and the Wild and the Twins and the this and the that, we're not getting together to complain about the game. We're getting together to actually talk and be honest with one another and share.

(13:14):

Which I always tell a guy, when you first show up to a Face IT group, Jamie, I've probably met thousands of men doing this work and I've yet to meet the guy who said, "Oh yeah, I routinely get together with 10 guys and tell them how I feel." It's a pretty foreign concept to most of us to sit and do that. And so we ask guys to commit to show up and talk about what's going through their heads and their hearts and their souls, not just what they're thinking. And for so many men, that's a unique and new thing.

(13:46):

But again, once we start realizing we share common ground around anxiety and feeling insecure, and you alluded to farming year after year, year over year, one year it looks great, the next year you can't believe you ever chose to be a farmer. And we all deal with those uncertainties, whatever it is our work is or raising our kids or just the environment we live in. And when we begin to share this information with one another and a guy can say, "Oh gosh, yeah, I feel that too." Or, "Oh yeah, I think that too." You just realize you're not alone. And to me, when I got out of the hospital some 24 years ago, I mean, I had a good job and I was coaching hockey and I just assumed I had to keep all my troubles secret because if anybody would've known how crazy I perceived myself to be, they would've sent me packing, right?

(14:47):

Well, the reality is as my story unfolded and people started hearing my story, not only did I get, why didn't you tell me, but I also got, yeah, me too, I deal with that too. And that's life. We guys somewhere along the way either got the line or started to believe feelings are for other people and quite frankly, that's just absurd and ridiculous.

Jamie (15:09):

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that that's what you just described as actually what helps the healing process is just knowing other people are going through it too and building confidence within yourself individually because, oh, they face the same thing?

Mark Meier (15:31):

Yep. And that's why I named the organization Face It, because we think we're so alone and once we start talking about it and facing it, we just see it's not as abnormal or uncommon as we start to believe it is, meaning that other people can't possibly feel as bad as we do or feel like they've let the world down to the degree we have. And we all feel that. And again, like I said earlier, 99% of these things we think and feel aren't true, but when you only listen to your own voice in your head and it's not a very good voice, then you start to believe this stuff.

Jamie (16:04):

Yeah. And-

Mark Meier (16:06):

And it's good to have a buddy who says to you, "Yeah, that's not even remotely true."

Jamie (16:11):

Yeah. So do you have some of your members that you've done some training with before on how to get people to open up and how to get them to ask the right questions, things like that? And what does that look like?

Mark Meier (16:30):

Yep. I mentioned all these groups that we run, they're all run by volunteers. They're all run by just regular guys. When I started this thing, we started with one group and we've grown over the years just based on guys sticking around saying, "I want to help. I want to give back." And these guys are the guys that end up leading these groups. And I think one of the big ... Well, there's a lot of differences, but one of the big difference between the guys that lead our group, and let's just say like a therapist, I always think of therapy as kind of a one-way street. If you show up at therapy, you don't know a lot about that therapist. You don't even know if they have a dog or if they have kids or ... Heck, half of them won't even tell you how old they are.

(17:08):

But when you're in our groups, the guys that lead the groups, they're showing up with their stuff just like everybody else. They're just another guy. It's just another guy in group. And my hope is that we can keep building, building this out. Let me just tell you real quick, over the years we've been doing this. I don't know, Jamie, if you are or not, I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with the Masons, the Minnesota Masons. Well, the Masons have been a big supporter of our work and just this year we've entered into a four-year, five-year agreement with them where, and I've spoken at probably 65 Mason lodges across the state of Minnesota.

(17:51):

We're going to bring this model to the Mason lodges so they can start incorporating some of the stuff we do, which is not really unique other than talking a little bit more openly and vulnerably about the things we deal with. So we can hopefully start spreading this to more rural communities and get out of just the Minneapolis St. Paul area. And really just all we're doing is bringing different conversations to people. I don't have steps. I don't have five secrets to happiness. I'm not smart enough for any of that stuff. I just know guys need to talk to each other more.

Jamie (18:25):

How often does faith come into a conversation?

Mark Meier (18:31):

I think it's a huge part of people's conversations. We purposefully ask people not to bring their particular faith or beliefs to our meetings just because guys have so many different experiences with it, but we talk all the time about the role of faith and recovery. And for so many people, their church, their meditation, whatever their spirituality might be, and I know for me, it's a huge part of my life. So it's a big part of the conversation. And I think that I will never say if you have it, you're in better shape than if you don't have it. I just know that for some folks, that's a really critical component and it's important that you find how that best works for you.

Jamie (19:15):

Yeah. Yeah. And I think where I come from that it becomes a lot more difficult to find hope if you don't have that faith component built in.

Mark Meier (19:15):

Yeah, for sure.

Jamie (19:30):

And a lot of times you find that through those conversations with others. And just talking about the costs, the hidden costs of depression too, what do you see in that, that when guys are really struggling that when they can break free from that things, what changes?

Mark Meier (19:53):

Well, let's see. What changes? Well, men, we'll talk specifically to men for a moment here. They tend to get divorced less often. They tend to drink less often. They tend to cheat less often. They tend to be addicted to pornography or other things less often. They tend to be more engaged in their kids' lives. I mean, it is such a profound ... The hidden costs, they're not even hidden, but I mean, the costs of being disconnected from your emotions are tremendous.

(20:26):

And for me, when I think about this, anytime I go and speak, and I've given hundreds of talks about depression and anxiety and suicide, the very first picture I ever show is a picture of my three children who are now 30, 26, and 24, my three children as young children. And I talk about how the suicide attempt I made, if I had completed that, their lives ... Now they likely would've figured it out, but in a sense, their lives would have been ruined. And I would have left them at far greater risk for a multitude of mental health crises, not to mention the fact the void of trying to understand why their father took his life.

(21:12):

And you don't have to go to that extreme to find the costs of guys ignoring their mental health. Like I said, divorce, substance use issues, abuse, physical, emotional abuse. Jamie, one of the things that has sort of caught me over the years doing this work at Face It is the number of men in my age bracket who were very physically abused and never talked about it. There's a lot of sexual abuse that occurred of men. And so there's all these other problems that come out of us ignoring. When I got out of the hospital, one of the things I really felt a strong sense of responsibility to was to get better for my wife and kids.

(21:55):

That's what drove me at first. I didn't really value myself at that point, but I really, really felt a sense of responsibility to my family to get better.

Jamie (22:07):

Yeah. I think what I'm hearing you say too is there's a lot of, for guys that are depressed and going through mental health issues, there's a lot of underlining situations that can be very difficult to unpack. But if it's just the uncertainty of life and life is life and there's going to be uncertainty every day, the opportunity to talk to one another and to have people in your life that you can talk to most, and this is me talking now, but most of the time you can get through that with that if there isn't these other circumstances that create a much more complex problem.

Mark Meier (22:48):

Right. And I think that, again, you can go to these far extremes with people's experiences and we talk about suicide. I think even the insidious nature of life taking its toll on you when you don't simply connect with others. I think you isolate yourself, you shut yourself out. My life is so much richer being aware of the fact that I have days where I feel anxious or I have days where I feel afraid, and that's just normal. That's a normal set of circumstances. I would assume based on what we shared very briefly about the agriculture, there's times people worry about, am I going to be able to feed my family? Am I going to lose my home? These are real things, and you'd probably figure them out, you'd probably be okay, but by simply acknowledging them and talking about them, it can help us. And the thing I tell guys all the time, guys are so reluctant to ask for help or so reluctant to take help.

(23:48):

We'll give the shirt off our back to just about anybody, but God forbid we let somebody else give us the shirt off their back. What I tell guys all the time is when you're willing to stand up and talk about what you're struggling with, you're giving another guy permission to do the same thing, you're helping. It takes way more courage to be honest and vulnerable than it does to shut down and be isolated.

Jamie (24:10):

Right, right. And often it changes the paradigm and the whole conversation where it's like, whoa, what just happened here, and creates for things that ... A lot of times the guy that's sharing and is vulnerable ends up being rewarded more than the other guy because of what he doesn't expect to be said or heard in that. So it's always interesting that way.

Mark Meier (24:33):

It goes back to our perception of what we think about other people. I think about a very good friend of mine, and his name is Dave Peters, and Dave is a Washington County deputy. He's a Marine. He started an organization called Operation 23 to Zero, and it's an organization to reduce military suicides. And Dave is about a badass as they come. I mean, this guy has seen heavy duty combat, he's in law enforcement, and I probably have more deep conversations over the years with a guy like him who talks about his own fears and vulnerabilities. And when he goes out and shows up wearing his uniform and talks about these and guys' jaws drop because their assumption is this guy is immune, Dave will hit him with the what you don't think I'm human. This is just normal life, whatever it is that we deal with.

Jamie (25:24):

Yeah. And something that I'm thinking about as we're talking and hadn't really expected, but when you live in rural America like I do, you're giving up certain things that you would get in a city. We don't have great restaurants or we don't have all kinds of opportunities to do 25 different things on a weekend, whatever it might be. But what you do get is you get these relationships. And just the other day, I just thought of this in here, I was in the grocery store and I bumped into the lady that ... I'm 54 years old. I bumped into the lady that delivered me. She was the nurse and she's in her late 80s and those kind of connections and to be able to talk.

(26:15):

And so again, I'm just bringing this all the way back to the agricultural community and the farming community is you have the opportunity because you know everybody in your community. Reach out to people, talk to them. And we've talked about this on the Water Table often. It's what makes agriculture so exciting is that everybody's rallying around. Now it's winter and nothing's going on. But when we get to spring, everybody will be rallying around getting the crop planted. And then in the fall, they're rallying around getting the crop out. And it's from the kids in school talking about it with their friends. How is your family doing harvesting to the grandpas and grandmas that are helping with making meals and those kind of things because they're out working.

(27:01):

And so the opportunity probably is even more significant to connect to people easier is what I should say, easier to connect to people in rural America. And so, do it because I think that's the fabric of what gets you through these life things.

Mark Meier (27:17):

Oh, I think without relationships, we're sunk.

Jamie (27:21):

Yeah. Yep.

Mark Meier (27:22):

And you think about what you just described, the stage is set because you know these people and you have these sort of lifelong connections. And to me, there's this next level opportunity. I passed you in the street and we're both busy and I say, "Oh, hey, Jamie, how you doing?" Your first reaction is, "Oh, I'm doing well." Well, hopefully you are, but in the instance you're not, that's the time to say, "Yeah, things are kind of hard." And if we can have those conversations, we should still have though, I'm doing great conversation. That's our opportunity is to take things to another level of depth and connection.

Jamie (28:01):

Yep, yep, for sure, for sure.

Mark Meier (28:03):

And for men, far too often our response to how you doing, it's, "Oh, I'm fine," when we're not fine. And that's the challenge.

Jamie (28:14):

Right, right. Well, Mark, as you put you on the spot here a little bit, but as you continue down this path and have been for 16 years now, what is kind of your hope and desire for Face It Foundation and what you'd like to see that at when you maybe hand it off to the next person?

Mark Meier (28:38):

I'd like to just see it continue. I've always said, let me just tell you a quick story. We don't charge for anything we do. We don't charge the individuals, we don't bill insurance, and certainly the vast majority of people who come to our organization, they could pay or they have insurance. But what I've always been trying to do from the get go is just create friendship for guys, this sort of next level friendship, if you will, where guys can connect. And my hope simply is that we continue to grow and we continue to spread and we continue to be a resource for people if they're in need or certainly model conversations around being more open and being more honest. And like I said, at 35 years of age, I had a great big job. I was administrator of a big medical clinic here in the cities.

(29:33):

I had the kids, I coached hockey. It looked like everything was perfect and I was lying to the world because I was a mess. And my legacy, if my legacy can be that guys are more willing to be honest when they're feeling like a mess, then I've satisfied what I think the good Lord gave me, which was a unique opportunity to survive what I tried to do to make it better. And so that's what I hope Is that we just keep talking, we keep being open with one another, we keep being honest when things really aren't going the way we hope they would be.

Jamie (30:08):

Yeah. Yep. Well, thanks for your time today. The water table is a fun topic to talk about, a very important topic, but I think our listeners and people in the agricultural industry will find this helpful as we're entering another year. I mean, we often talk about as a farmer, every year is different. So they got like 45 chances in their life. And each one is different. Each one comes with its own challenges and sometimes the wind is in your back for a few years in a row, but when that happens, you're always kind of looking over your shoulder as when is it going to turn and go directly into my face? Yeah.

Mark Meier (30:49):

Well, and I hope, Jamie, I mean, I don't know what you do as far as resources, but certainly people can find us at faceitfoundation.org. And it's myself and one other guy in the office. If anybody has any questions, they can email us on the contact form and I'll get it. And I talk to people all the time from all over the country just with questions or thoughts they have. So I'm always happy to be a resource.

Jamie (31:12):

Great. I appreciate it, Mark, and thanks for joining the Water Table.

Mark Meier (31:16):

Yeah, thank you for having me.

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Jamie Duininck

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