In the US, the construction industry is the top industry with the highest suicide rates and largest numbers. Historically, mental health and suicide have not been considered safety priorities, until now. In this podcast a global safety expert helps us connect the dots.
Safety professionals are well-versed in “the fatal four” — falls, followed by struck by object, electrocution, and caught-in/between — and know that if they are able to prevent these forms of deaths, they will save almost 600 lives each year (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.). What most safety professionals are not aware of is that suicide in construction kills takes many more lives. A recent study published by the CDC (Peterson, et al, 2018) found that in their sample 20% of all men who died by suicide in the US were in the construction/extraction industry. In 2017, 47,173 people died by suicide, 27,404 of them were men ages 20-64 (CDC, 2017). If 20% of them were in construction/extraction that means we can estimate that over 5,000 men working in construction/extraction died by suicide — over 9x more than all of the fatal four deaths together.
When a workplace fatality happens, the cause is almost always determined to be “accidental” and a deeper investigation into intent to die is not undertaken. The remedy is then to do more safety training. When we look at the fatal occupational injuries, however, the first two most common (transportation incidents and falls) are also common ways people think about taking their lives (CDistrosby et al, 1999; De Andrade & DeLeo, 2007). Thus, it is possible that some if not many of these workplace fatalities are actually suicide deaths, which then means that safety training may not be effective in preventing them.
CLICK HERE to read the full article on SallySpencerThomas.com posted in May of 2019 and to listen to the Podcast featuring TJ Lyons.
