I am sure this has been going on for a long time. When my dad was a boy growing up in Iowa he mentioned a lot of times they were found hanging in the barn.
In fact he found a relative that same way when he was just a kid.
I guess its the hard lifestyle that does it...
Yeah, ‘twas ever thus. Check out a book called “Wisconsin Death Trip” sometime. It’s a collection of news stories (and weird photos) from a small area of Wisconsin in the 1890s. Loads of farmer suicides. It’s a lonely, stressful job with everything riding on factors you can’t always control, debt and so on.