Construction jobs can be hard on your mind, not just your body. This conference wants to help
A mental health advocate from Australia is coming to St. John's this week as a keynote speaker to discuss problems that construction workers face in their industry.
Jorgen Gullestrup, CEO of Mates in Construction, says workers in the industry face mental health problems just like workers in any industry.
"We know that construction workers are like anyone else, and we know that suicide and mental health is an issue generally within the community, with up to one in five of us experiencing a diagnosable mental health condition over a 12-month period," he told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show, ahead of a two-day conference held by the Newfoundland & Labrador Construction Safety Association, starting Wednesday.
Gullestrup sat with the association's CEO, Jackie Manuel, to discuss how to address troubling statistics, and what can be learned from similarities between construction work in Australia and N.L.
"Blue-collar men particularly have higher rates of suicide than average," he said.
"And then we perhaps overlay that with conditions that might not always not be conducive to good mental health."
We've done nothing, or very little, to prevent psychological injuries. And they're occurring. - Jackie Manuel
Some of those negative conditions include being away from friends and family when working on contracts.
"We often work long hours. We often work away from home, and I suppose home is really the purpose we go to work," he said.
"We often get disconnected from the things that probably mean the most to us."
Manuel agreed, and said she sees a similar issue in Newfoundland and Labrador, calling it "the isolation factor."
"Folks are isolated from their families, or working long hours, in our province in particular," she said.
"You finish one construction project [and] you never know when the next job is coming. So there's the whole uncertainty, and the financial pressures associated with that."
Since announcing the conference, Manuel said, multiple people have approached her to share stories about mental health issues in the industry. One of her board members, she said, lost a son, who was a construction worker, to suicide.
She also said more can be done to help workers in the province.
"We've done nothing, or very little, to prevent psychological injuries. And they're occurring," she said.
"This is, we hope, going to be a springboard in this province that we can look at establishing a program that is aimed at recognizing and combatting some of these psychological injuries."
Solutions Down Under
Gullestrup said there are some sobering figures that prompted him to found his organization.
"Back in 2006, we had a very large study done that showed that suicide rates amongst construction workers were almost twice the rate of other employed men," he said.
"We actually lost six workers to suicide for every worker we lost to an accident in their work, and that was just mind-boggling."
Since starting Mates in Construction, he said he's seen an eight per cent decrease in suicides in his home state of Queensland.
Part of achieving that decrease, he said, was encouraging construction workers to offer help.
Special employees, called "connection points," were trained by the organization to refer their coworkers to mental health services.
"Particularly as men, we're not very good at seeking help. We find it very, very difficult asking for help, but we will give help even when people don't ask," he said.
"When we start offering help, we actually start changing the culture we work within."
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