“From awareness to action”: How construction suicide prevention efforts have changed

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For many years, Trent Johnson kept the details of his brother Luke’s death private. Since then he has started sharing.

“I feel like I can’t ask people to talk about it if I can’t talk about it myself,” said Johnson, PCL Construction’s Midwest vice president. “So slowly, over the last few years, I’ve gotten more and more comfortable sharing the story.”

During a large company meeting on mental health, Johnson told colleagues that Luke had committed suicide in 2013.

Afterwards, he said his phone was ringing with answers. People had started contacting directly and immediately. They offered condolences, thanked him for sharing his story, offered their own stories and said he helped give them new context for the mental health crisis in construction.

Johnson’s story is just one factor in his passion for the subject, he said. He pointed to other events he supports, such as a charity golf tournament support suicide prevention at the end of this month.

And now he’s ready for more conversations, during Construction Suicide Prevention Week, which began Monday. September is also National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.

This week, which has formally been running since 2019, gives crews a chance to step back and discuss mental health struggles in an effort to remove the stigma.

But Johnson and other experts told Construction Dive that to affect change, more needs to be done. If the industry is to help those most vulnerable to mental health problems, they must go beyond prevention to address the underlying causes.

“We need to move from awareness to action,” Johnson said.

Construction and suicide

The construction industry has consistently ranked as one of the highest rates of worker suicide deaths. In 2024, construction had 41.9 deaths by suicide per 100,000 workers, according to the most recent data analyzed by construction unions of North America and CPWR, the Center for Construction Research and Training.

While these statistics are troubling, there are signs of progress. The 2024 figures marked a slight decline, with 1.7% fewer construction workers dying by suicide compared to the previous year.

The issue has also attracted attention at the federal level. In August, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada introduced the Law for the construction of the path towards the prevention of suicide to investigate and better understand the problem.

Continuing to close that gap is no small task, experts told Construction Dive. Efforts must be ongoing and consistent, they said, and include new offers from employers to support workers’ mental health.

Advice and assistance to the employer

John Gaal, director of worker welfare for the nonprofit Missouri Works Initiative, has conducted extensive studies on suicide in the construction trades. During a survey of apprentice carpenters in St. Louis and Toronto, noted that 0% of respondents said they used employee assistance programs or member assistance programs when struggling with mental health.

Assuming the percentage was rounded, Gaal checked the raw numbers to confirm: zero respondents had taken advantage of EAPs or MAPs.

“That was very disturbing,” Gaal said. “And as I dug into this in our industry, there’s only a 3-7% uptake of EAP and MAP.”

Josh Liss, CEO and co-founder of Counslr, a text-based mental health support platform, has found similar data, with HR reps reporting a 2% uptake of EAPs.

Also, as Counslr has started partnerships with employers in the construction space, Liss said 89 percent of employed users reported it was their first time using mental health support offered by the company.

He theorized that the low use of EAP stems from workers who, after using free resources, ultimately have to pay for sessions out of pocket.

“So people are saying to themselves, ‘Is the problem I’m dealing with big enough to use one of my free sessions or should I just suck it up and wait for a bigger problem?'” Liss said. “That forces people to think with their wallets, which is not what we want.”

Stigma of the sexist man

For years, the drumbeat of prevention has been to remove the stigma around mental health struggles. Mental health education and awareness has made a difference, PCL’s Johnson said.

“I can tell you unequivocally that in projects where we’ve actually had people with mental health crises at our project sites and the superintendents have been trained on how to approach someone who’s in a mental crisis and guide them and talk to them, it’s been very, very, effective,” he said.

Still, it’s also vital to find people who don’t feel like speaking out in the midst of these crises, said Stephanie Lemek, a former human resources professional and founder of The Wounded Workforce, a mental health consulting firm.

“My favorite audience is the person who absolutely doesn’t want to talk about mental health,” said Lemek, who also serves on the board of directors for this year’s Construction Suicide Prevention Week. “That foreman or superintendent with their arms crossed, rolling their eyes, saying, ‘I can do this job. I’ve been doing it for years. I don’t need this support.'”

While the reduced stigma has made it easier for some to speak out, there will always be some “John Wayne types,” he said, who require a different approach.

“I’m a big believer in starting at an existing place of strength,” he said. “Instead of having mental wellness, like in Kumbaya circles, everyone is used to talking about safety in the workplace. So maybe it’s as simple as once a month your safety retreat or your toolbox talk is focused on mental health.”

The cycle of pain

This tough guy mentality doesn’t come out of nowhere, Lemek noted. Construction is hard work, requiring physical and mental strength. Sometimes the nature of this work creates tension, a direct link to mental health struggles.

Repetitive work and heavy lifting or serious injury can take a toll on construction workers. When that happens, their emotional health also struggles, said Paula Allen, global research and insights leader at TELUS Health, a Vancouver-based health and human services company.

“Pain leads to anxiety. Pain leads to more pain. Pain leads to a sense of helplessness,” Allen said.

As leaders seek to create safer environments for difficult conversations and coach for responses, addressing the causes can help get to the root of the problem.

“You can’t get rid of the pain, but you can cycle it in terms of the design of how you actually apply the work in terms of how much you put on any individual,” Allen said. For example, he suggested scheduling a rotation for which worker is doing the most intense heavy work, with breaks to make sure no one is overexerting themselves.

Lemek agreed: Small changes make a difference.

“Thinking about sustainable ways to change these conditions over time has an incredible impact,” Lemek said. In another suggested change, Lemek noted that employers could offer crews an extra day off, even once a month, after several full weeks and full days.

This week offers an opportunity for such conversations; a context to break the ice on a challenging topic. But construction professionals dealing with this issue recognized the need to advance this effort throughout the year to continually stress available resources.

And, for those who may not be taking advantage of the support, sources said addressing the stresses of the job can be a step towards reaching both the hardest-hit and the vulnerable.

“If there was one really important take-home message that I could dig into, it would be that the people who need support the most are the least likely to speak up,” Liss said.