States are continuing to count up the damage caused by flooding last month. The Iowa Farm Bureau Federation now saying the state’s economic damage will likely surpass $2 billion dollars. Farmers in Iowa will struggle to plant as many as 145,000 flooded acres along the Missouri River.
Doctor Tina Chasek, a mental health professional the University of Nebraska, says there’s concern about the toll flooding could have on people in the farming industry.
“When you’ve lost everything you’ve built up over your lifetime you go through an extreme sense of loss and grief,” says Chasek. “Folks can just feel really overwhelmed.”
Dr. Chasek says even for those that didn’t lose everything, just coping with the cleanup can be exhausting.
“When you’re tired physically that also can take a huge toll on your emotional well-being,” says Chasek. “When we look at six to eight months or a year down the road that’s when we get really concerned about high rates of depression and high rates of suicide.”
As for disaster aid, an impasse continues in Congress. The legislation is stalled over an issue of special aid for Puerto Rico. Ag leaders say they are working on it and hoping for a compromise in a short period of time.
