It’s 3 am and a construction worker is driving a 15-ton paving machine during a night-paving operation on a freeway. Orange barrels indicate this is a work zone. Impossibly bright lights illuminate the area. Still, an inattentive driver, or one who is impaired by alcohol, often crashes through the barriers and sends a worker to the hospital. The schedule is tight, the stress is high, and the road must be turned back over to traffic in two hours.
A masonry worker is bent over in the blazing sun crafting the outside of a structure in an American city. The finished product needs to be correct and done quickly. The foreman is demanding. This Hispanic worker does not completely understand all the directives in English, but he hurries on anyway. His part of the work needs to get done TODAY.
Construction workers are experiencing stress, fatigue, deadline pressures and other on-the-job worries. Many workers try to push through it all in a “tough guy” culture. Some cope well while others begin to slide into drug or alcohol abuse or, even worse, commit suicide.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2017 that male construction workers have the second highest suicide rate in the country. Only males in the quarrying and oil and gas extraction category are higher. This correlates with a 40 percent increase in the suicide rate among the US working-age population from 2000 to 2017.
Mental health and suicide are serious issues for construction workers and the public at large. Most small to medium-sized construction firms don’t know where to start in addressing these problems for their workers. They want to protect them, knowing that good workers are hard to find in this economy. A good starting point is a website www.preventconstructionsuicide.com.
The website is helping to raise awareness of the suicide problem in the industry. The site also provides tools and resources to help companies get started in helping their employees. More than 300 companies, unions and organizations across the country have signed on as stakeholders in the effort.
Organized effort to combat suicide
Michelle Walker, founding chairman of Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention, has worked for more than 20 years in the construction industry. She is VP of Finance and Administration at SSC Underground. She cited a finding that the suicide rate in the construction industry is more than three times that of the general public. It is not a statistic that she and the other members are comfortable with.
“I have a tremendous passion for the work that we do,” she said. “Construction is an industry that we appreciate and a workforce that we admire. These people give us the roads we drive on, the buildings we work in, the homes we live in and the utilities we use. Walk onto any well-run construction site and you will see teams of contractors and subcontractors working to solve problems together.”
Starting in 2016, interested construction companies and organizations began attending a series of summits on suicide in America. As the coalition came together, startling facts came to light including that suicide is a true cultural epidemic with 48,000 deaths by suicide in the US. Experts estimate that for each death by suicide there are 25 attempted suicides with each suicide impacting approximately 112 people.
The coalition began to identify elements of suicides in the construction industry and suggested specific actions to take in the companies. “In the workplace, we want to help fight this battle by encouraging peer relationships and creating social connectedness,” she said. “Suicides can happen when people feel isolated and alone. Another factor is perceived burdensomeness: that the world would be better without me. In the workplace, this can happen when there is poor management, feelings of belittlement and people made to feel less than what they really are.”
Walker notes that people working in construction often have a risk-seeking behavior. On the one hand, it attracts people who are not afraid of risk, being unafraid of heights, for example. This helps them be prepared for their jobs. Still, companies need to recognize that it is a behavior that can put workers at risk for suicide.
“We can’t ignore the role that mental health plays in all this,” Walker said. “At least half the people who die by suicide have an underlying mental illness at the time of their death. “We want to create a caring culture where people feel safe, valued and important.”
Chuck MacDonald is a writer, editor and blogger who lives in Annapolis, Md. He specializes in construction issues.
