CONSTRUCTION workers are often great at identifying colleagues who are struggling with mental health issues, but more work is required to recognise when they need support themselves and to ensure that organisations are designing out working practices that can cause mental ill-health.
That’s the view of Samantha Downie, MD of Mates in Mind, a charity dedicated to raising awareness and providing effective interventions to enable organisations to build positive mental health in and through work.
In an exclusive interview with Project Scotland ahead of the recent World Suicide Prevention Day, Samantha hailed the progress the construction sector has made in recent years to improve the wellbeing of its workforce. However, the suicide rate remains stubbornly high (3.7 times higher than the national average), with workers grappling with a range of issues including long hours, intense workloads, being away from home a lot of the time, and financial pressures.
To address this, Mates in Mind launched a new pilot project to provide free suicide awareness and prevention training for construction workers. Created in partnership with Baton of Hope (a charity committed to suicide prevention), the digital training modules aim to help reduce suicide amongst sole traders and self-employed construction workers, who were identified as being often most at risk of mental ill health and who might otherwise be unable to engage with the necessary interventions.
The two charities are both partners of The Royal Foundation’s National Suicide Prevention Network, a four nations initiative launched last year to strengthen access, collaboration and innovation across suicide prevention.
The digital training project is funded by The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales.
Research has shown that nearly two thirds of construction workers regularly experience stress, and almost a third have experienced thoughts of suicide at some point.
“Mates in Mind celebrates ten years next year. We were set up to address what at the time was recognised to be a crisis in construction around suicide and worker mental health,” Samantha explained. “Since then, lots of work has been done, by us and other organisations, to raise awareness. There’s been huge change, not just in construction, but nationally. And yet, the suicide rate is still too high. We know a lot about why that is, but we also know that we need to do more in terms of embedding effective interventions to end it.
“Our research when we were initially founded indicated those most at risk are often at the end of supply chains and in the micro-organisations or sole traders. Whilst we predominantly work with organisations, we knew the best way to reach and engage with this at risk group of construction workers was to develop training they could access whenever and wherever they were able to.”
Samantha revealed that when they surveyed self-employed construction workers, more than two thirds said they had helped somebody recently with their mental health or emotional wellbeing. However, two thirds also thought there was stigma in disclosing their own mental health.
“We know that people are identifying and helping others who are experiencing mental ill-health, but don’t recognise it and flag it in themselves,” Samantha added. “I think there are all sorts of barriers to disclosing emotional distress or need for mental health support, or just concern around your mental health. I think what’s sitting under that is that construction workers are either poor at noticing, or possibly acknowledging, their own emotional state, at checking in with themselves, at thinking about actually what they can do about it, at feeling like it’s something they should be prioritising and have a right to ask for support and help, and have those conversations about themselves.
“This is not about putting the responsibility for fixing the issues on the workers themselves, but instead giving them the tools and confidence to firstly identify the issues and secondly to ask their employer for support.”
Financial pressures are a key aspect, with many workers feeling overwhelmed by having more outgoings than incomings and the challenge of meeting the needs of their families. Samantha explained that’s where some of the pressure really builds and workers can reach a ‘tipping point’ where they see no way forward. At that point, it’s vital that individuals know support is available and how to access it.
The male-dominated aspect of construction is also a factor.
“Just as women have issues that particularly impact them, men also have issues and needs,” she stated. “We have a men’s health strategy because we know the health of our men is, in areas, declining over time, particularly men of middle age or late middle age. Classically those working in construction often do not, for a whole range of reasons, access health. It’s not just mental health; they don’t access physical health checks either.
“They don’t acknowledge or act on the fact that their heart is racing or their chronic pain is inhibiting how they work. There’s lots of things getting in the way of men accessing the health support and screening that is available, alongside a culture of ‘get on with it’, which is why there’s work around trying to get health checks on site.
“My experience research-wise and also anecdotally is if you speak to individual construction workers on site, they’re perfectly able to have a conversation about emotional state, mental wellbeing, how they feel, what they experience as pressure, particularly if you scaffold that conversation a bit and ask questions in a language that makes sense to them. It isn’t about individuals not being able to recognise or take up things; it’s about something that’s happening systemically that blocks those individuals being able to do that. I think that’s important because otherwise we can inadvertently put the responsibility on individuals and I don’t think it’s an individual failing; I think it’s a systemic challenge; it’s cultural, and it’s something that we need to take responsibility for regionally, nationally, sector-level.”
The good news is that things are improving. Samantha mentioned a ‘maturation’ in the industry around mental health and wellbeing and the fact organisations want to do right by their employees – not only because it’s the morally correct thing to do and a legal requirement, but also because it improves productivity.
“The view we hold is that mental health is everyone’s responsibility, by that I mean both employers and employees,” Samantha concluded. “The reason we believe that is because sometimes it’s much easier to notice signs in someone else than it is in yourself, particularly if you’re really struggling.”
• To access the free suicide prevention training, visit https://www.matesinmind.org/training-and-resources/world-suicide-prevention-day-10-september
