Remember the "Farm Crisis"?
(Page 4 of 8)
November/December 1996
By Joel Dyer, Boulder Weekly (www.boulderweekly.com)
Wallace went on to say that if the rural economic system remained fragile--and it has--the community depression could turn into a social and cultural psychosis, which he described as "delayed stress syndrome." He believes this transition is now a reality. "There are regions of the country," he says," where the farm crisis has created pockets of poverty in rural communities and where large numbers of individuals are suffering from this syndrome." He also warns that even if the government acts immediately to ease the economic situation in farm country, rural people will be affected by this psychosis for decades to come.
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In 1989 Wallace could only guess how this community psychosis would eventually express itself. Today he has seen his worst fears realized. "We knew the anti-government backlash was just around the corner, but we didn't know exactly what form it would take. You can't treat human beings in a society the way farmers have been treated without having them organize and fight back. It was just a matter of time."
Losing a farm doesn't happen overnight. It can take four to six years from the time a family first gets into financial trouble. By the end, says Wallace, the families are victims of chronic long-term stress. "Once a person is at that point," he explains, "there are basically four escape hatches. One, they seek help--usually through a church or the medical community. Two, they can't take the pain and they commit suicide. They hurt themselves. Three, they become psychotic. They lose touch with reality. They basically go crazy. And last, they... turn their anger outward. They decide that since they hurt, they're going to make others hurt. These are the people who wind up threatening or even killing their leaders or FMHA agents. They're also the ones who are most susceptible to a violent anti-government message."
Unfortunately, psychotic personalities looking for support can find it in the wrong places. "Any group," says Wallace, "can fill the need for support. Not just good ones. Identity, militias, or any anti-government group can come along and fill that role. Add their influence to a personality that is already violent toward others and you have an extremely dangerous individual."
No one knows how many members of the 700,000 farm families who have already lost their land or the additional hundreds of thousands who are still holding on to their farms under extreme duress have fallen prey to this violent psychosis, but all agree the number is growing.
Most people don't understand the mind-set of farmers, says Wallace: "They ask, why don't farmers just get a new job or why does losing a farm cause someone to kill themselves or someone else?" Another rural psychologist, Val Farmer, has written often on this subject. In an article in Iowa Farmer Today, he explains why farm loss affects its victims so powerfully: "To lose a farm is to lose part of one's own identity. There is probably no other occupation that has the potential for defining one's 'self' so completely. Those who have gone through the loss of a family farm compare their grief to mourning a death in the family, one of the hardest experiences in life.
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