Mental Health in the Construction Industry

 

 

The Mental Health Series

 

 

The Wealthy Ironworker takes a look at mental health in a way many do not – and invites you to join in on the discussion.

 

*NOTE: This is Part 1 of a series focused on Mental Health.*

The Mental Health Series (Subject to change while being developed):

1. Mental Health in the Construction Industry
2. Acknowledging the Stigma Against Mental Health
3. Men & The Broken Family Court System
4. Finances – Fighting For What Your Time is REALLY Worth
5. Substance Abuse – A Skilled Trades Epidemic
6. Social Media – We’ve Never Been So Connected But So Isolated
7. Comparison – The Thief of Joy
8. Hope – The Elephant NOT in the Room
9. Suicide – YOU Matter More Than You Know
10. You Are NOT A Burden
11. We NEED Good Friends
12. Burnout – THE Future of the Industry
13. Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up – Book Review
14. The Importance of Resiliency – What Can We Do?

 

The construction industry is facing what’s being called a Mental Health Epidemic.

The Department of Labor reports that “In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that men working in construction have one of the highest suicide rates compared to other industries. Their rate of suicide is about four times higher than the general population.”

 

4 TIMES HIGHER.

Center for Workplace Mental Health notes this is a high priority for numerous organizations.

Construction Dive mentions it. So does OSH Online. Even Procore discusses it.

But, we should wonder, what exactly is mental health – and what are the disorders lumped into this epidemic?

 

Mental Health and Disorders Defined

 

What exactly is mental health, exactly?

 

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act, and helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.”

What’s more, they also have a fairly robust list of what they call “mental health conditions” – AND some early warning signs and symptoms. Many are familiar – anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, to start off. There are others, but this list isn’t attempting to be comprehensive. If you are looking for a good resource to help you identify things, go ahead and check them out.

 

Mental Health Understood

 

 

I’m convinced that most of us can tell when someone we work closely with or care for is not acting like themselves. That isn’t to say there aren’t outliers; people can and often do surprise us. Indeed, you often hear, “he didn’t seem like the type of guy to do this,” or “We didn’t see any signs.” For the most part, however, we can tell, and often, the signs are recognizable.

If people are connected, that is.

Scores of people go through periods of life without genuine friends – those who are concerned about what is best for you – often at the cost of themselves.

Moreover, and contrary to what many believe, technology hasn’t simplified our lives – it’s greatly complicated them.  And that complexity is stressful. Technology has created many things, but to say it hasn’t given us more work, anxiety, and trouble is disingenuous.

This is to be lamented.

 

Mental Health – What’s Changed?

 

 

The focus on mental health has increased dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years. There are numerous reasons for this – and during the course of those series, some of them are addressed – but the question remains: what’s changed?

What is it about mental health that has made it front and center of numerous initiatives – including large construction firms pledging millions to address it?

 

Let’s take a look at some of the items that uniquely contribute to mental health issues in the construction industry.

 

Poor Mental Health Has A Stigma Attached to It

 

 

Culturally, we have stigmatized the skilled trades for decades. This has had some detrimental results, both culturally and in the trades. Depending on who you listen to/read, the trades have a shortfall of 500-600 thousand workers. In a decade? It will be 2-3 million. We have a SERIOUS problem on our hands.

Moreover, the icing on the cake is that this stigma extends to the mental health space, too. Mental health (robust mental vigor to handle stress – mental resiliency, if you will), is needed to carry on in this world, and as the world gets more complex, we need to be even more resilient.

We take a look at the stigma associated with mental health in the article, “Acknowledging the Stigma Against Mental Health” (the next article in this series).

 

The Family Court System is Broken

 

The family court system is broken

 

The construction industry is overwhelmingly male, and because this is so, we simply cannot ignore cultural issues that affect men’s mental health – and no discussion is complete without addressing the outright disdain for men in the broken family court system.

The family court system actually incentivizes divorce. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, it also incentivizes children to be taken away from their own fathers.

According to Mensrights.com, “85 percent of custodial parents are mothers.”

This is substantiated by Joseph Cordell of Cordell & Cordell, the nation’s largest law firm of divorce attorneys for men.

According to Stanley Charles Thorne, – a civil rights activist for men’s rights in the courtroom:

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“That is systemic not necessarily because there is gender bias in favor of Mom but because there is a federal money bias in favor of a lopsided custody result under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. Title IV-D refers to state-run child support enforcement programs which are funded through grants provided for by the Social Security Act.

The federal government in its wisdom has incentivized a lopsided model. The bias for a lopsided custody model that is facilitated, fostered and financially incentivized by federal subsidy money paid for child support enforcement and collection by the federal government to the states sets us up for a lopsided model instead of equality.”

 

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Life outside our castle is tough enough; add in the state incentivization of divorce, “guilty until proven innocent,” and the outright alienation of children from their father – and, well, even the most resilient of men can find this absolutely overwhelming.

We will explore this complex topic more in-depth in “Men & The Broken Family Court System.”

 

Wages Have Remained Relatively Stagnant Compared to Productivity and Cost of Living

 

 

The chart above shows that since 1973, productivity and hourly compensation have been diverging. When you increase productivity, you increase profits. When you keep wages down despite that productivity, you do it doubly so. But keeping wages down is, in reality, more than meets the eye.

It often takes the form of wage and benefit erosion, anti-union tactics, misclassification, exploitation, and more.

What’s more, this doesn’t even begin to address the cost of living, the pandemic’s massive transfer of wealth,”greedflation,” or other factors that overall contribute to the erosion of mental health. There is plenty of data out there to review, which helps illustrate the importance of the financial realm when discussing the overall mental health of skilled tradesmen and women.

We will explore this more in the article “Finances – Fighting For What Your Time is REALLY Worth.”

 

The Advent of Social Media

 

Social media may be amoral – but the outcome of usage is anything but.

There isn’t a single study out there that indicates social media use is good for a person. What’s more, numerous studies show just how detrimental it is to kids.

And yet, we continue to use it – and some of us, far more than we should.

We know it, too. I’ve never heard of someone who took a look at their screen time and remarked, “Wait – ONLY 3 hours on social media? I gotta up those numbers.”

We KNOW it isn’t good for us. When we compare ourselves to others because of what’s posted on social media (which is what we do, is it not?), it adds to our anxiety.

Comparison is the thief of joy, after all.

Social media has done significant damage to the fabric of society and we’ll take a deeper dive into this significant issue in the article “Social Media – We’ve Never Been So Connected But So Isolated.”

 

We Have No Hope

 

 

Hope has, unfortunately, largely been absent from American public discourse for a long time now.

Everywhere you go, people seem to have lost the ability to treat others as human beings. With the rise and use of social media, there has also been an increase in this behavior. The two, however, are not one and the same.

Social media may amplify what people are feeling, but it doesn’t adequately explain it. There is something else at play.

We should ask ourselves: Why do we not see other human beings as human beings? Why have we seen an increasing amount of vitriolic hate? What is it that devalues others? For that matter, what is it that devalues our own lives?

I don’t want to tip my hat too much here; instead, we explore this crippling absence in “Hope – The Elephant NOT in the Room.”

 

Suicide Has Increased Dramatically

 

 

I’m convinced that all of the above (and more we didn’t even touch on) has led to increased suicide in the industry – and the general U.S. population as a whole.

According to a report from the CDC:

 

“This report estimated suicide rates comprehensively for industry and occupational groups meeting sample size criteria and identified groups with rates higher than the study’s population rate. Although relative comparisons of suicide rates in this manner are useful for prevention purposes, these results should not overshadow the essential fact that the suicide rate in the U.S. working-age population overall has increased by 40% in less than 2 decades.” – Emphasis mine.

 

40% – that’s absolutely stunning.

NIH reported that in 2021, “there were nearly two times as many suicides (48,183) in the United States as there were homicides (26,031).”

More specifically, the CDC reported that in 2016, the construction industry had a suicide rate that was 4 TIMES HIGHER than the general population, with a rate of 49.6 per 100,000 workers.

 

The CDC also specifically looked at the various crafts in construction per 100,000:

Structural Ironworkers – 79.0

Millwrights – 78.7

Brick Masons/Reinforcing (Rebar) Ironworkers – 67.6

Laborers – 62.0

Carpenters – 54.7

Welders – 53.6

Operators – 52.8

Electricians – 44.0

Pipefitters – 35.4

Given that the construction industry is heavily male, it’s pertinent to note that the CDC also reports that 79.6% of ALL suicides are men.

 

These are tragic stats that clearly indicate we have a massive problem. We talk more about this sobering topic in greater detail in the article “Suicide – YOU Matter More Than You Know.”

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

 

Long-time readers (and listeners to The Wealthy Ironworker Podcast) will know what I’m about to say: In order to effectively address a problem, you have to acknowledge and understand as much of it as possible. Only then, when you have as much information as available, can you begin to create serious, robust, and effective solutions.

With each of the individual topics in this series, I hope to take a deeper dive into what’s going on, how they are contributing to the overall decline in mental resiliency, and, where possible, detail ways individuals can adapt, overcome, and build much-needed resiliency.

You will notice that I did NOT say the construction industry, instead opting to emphasize individuals. That’s because IF we can help individuals with everything we’re doing, the construction industry WILL benefit.

The opposite, however, is NOT true.

If we help the construction industry, people could be helped – but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will.

And, if I’m honest, I’m SO tired of only the industry getting attention. Typically, when someone is referring to “the construction industry,” it’s a synonym for employers. Many employers say they care – but their actions and culture paint a different picture. I’ve seen it with safety my entire career – and I’m seeing it with mental health, too.

To that end, follow The Wealthy Ironworker, and I hope you find The Mental Health Series educational, inspirational, and enlightening.

 

 

 

*NOTE: This is Part 1 of a series focused on Mental Health.*

The Mental Health Series (Subject to change while being developed):

1. Mental Health in the Construction Industry
2. Acknowledging the Stigma Against Mental Health
3. Men & The Broken Family Court System
4. Finances – Fighting For What Your Time is REALLY Worth
5. Substance Abuse – A Skilled Trades Epidemic
6. Social Media – We’ve Never Been So Connected But So Isolated
7. Comparison – The Thief of Joy
8. Hope – The Elephant NOT in the Room
9. Suicide – YOU Matter More Than You Know
10. You Are NOT A Burden
11. We NEED Good Friends
12. Burnout – THE Future of the Industry
13. Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up – Book Review
14. The Importance of Resiliency – What Can We Do?