Suicide Prevention in Construction: What Safety Professionals Can Actually Do

So do we have a rip from the headlines today, or are we just going to roll right into the episode?

We do have a rip from the headlines today.

Today's rip from the headlines story highlights a risk that doesn't show up on most JHAs, but it continues to claim more lives than most traditional workplace hazards.

So Senator Catherine Cortez, Matasso, I apologize if I mispronounced the senator from Nevada's name.

It's not intentional, but she has introduced the Constructing the Path to Suicide Prevention Act, which is legislation that would direct the CDC to conduct a national study into suicide among construction workers, which has one of the, I guess, highest suicide rates in all of industry.

Her bill aims to identify the employment, organizational, and personal factors contributing to the crisis and develop evidence-based recommendations for prevention.

So I think it's very timely legislation as you're looking at unions and contractors and industry groups.

We're investing millions of dollars in awareness campaigns, peer support networks, mental health initiatives.

We're going to talk about some of that today.

But when you're looking at a suicide rate of 43.2 deaths per 100,000 workers,

So, James, that's higher than the national average.

It's 32 per 100,000 for men and 8 per 100,000 for women, general population.

So it is considerably higher.

I mean, that's quite a few lives higher.

And, you know, while we're talking about this, I mean, this is not just...

Yes, we can talk about construction, but, you know, workplace stressors get to everybody.

And I also don't, I would be remiss if I didn't mention our military personnel and our veterans who also have a high suicide rate.

So that's something we're going to talk about today when it comes to, you know, Suicide Prevention Month, which is September, right? You know, you can put it in whatever lens that you want.

Many of these things are across the board for The population, right? And for many high-risk groups like veterans, construction workers, et cetera.

So, you know, I mean, keep that in mind as we're talking about this.

I'm full support of her bill.

But my question is, do we really need more research? Or do we just need to act? We need to act.

On the research that we already have.

I mean, we already know the statistics.

What can we do to bring more people home safe? from the hazard we really don't want to talk about.