Suicide Watch

By choosing awareness over action, the UK demolition and construction sector has lost more than 1,400 of its workers to suicide in the space of just two years.

It is 18 years since my former business partner took his own life, leaving behind him a grieving widow and six grieving children.

I am a little slow on the uptake.  Even though I had seen and experienced it up close, it would be another nine years before I wrote about the correlation between demolition and construction and male suicide.

As I said, I merely reported on a correlation that others had previously identified.  The UK demolition and construction industry has been aware of the very specific mental health issues facing those working in its midst for roughly a decade or more.

The industry had ten years during which it could and should have taken meaningful action to change working practices that are so challenging that workers are taking their own lives at a rate that is roughly three times the national average.

But rather than rewriting the industry playbook, the demolition and construction industry did what it does so frequently and so predictably.  It reached for the sticking plasters.  Instead of opting to address mental health problems, it chose instead to focus upon awareness.

That approach spawned a plethora of mental health awareness training courses.  Those courses gave us hundreds or possibly thousands of mental health first aiders.  We saw dozens of new construction mental health charity organisations and initiatives seep out of the woodwork.  And we saw countless social media posts from companies and trade associations proclaiming their mental health awareness for all to see.

All of that created some new jobs.  It generated cash for training course providers, and revenue for the countless new charities.  And it allowed companies and organisations to pat themselves on the back for their empathy.

What it didn’t do, however, was address the matter that spawned the training courses, charities and social media proclamations in the first place - The suicide rate within the sector.

It was previously claimed that 507 construction and demolition workers took their own lives in 2021.  The Office for National Statistics has just adjusted that figure upwards to a shameful 668.  In 2022, that figure rose to 749.

We do not yet have the figures for 2023.  But given the downward spiral of the construction industry during that year and the company collapses and redundancies that followed, there is every likelihood that the figure will have edged closer to the 1,000 mark.

In the field of physical safety and well-being, a spate of incidents sparks outrage and action.  A dozen deaths caused by falls from height is sufficient for the Health and Safety Executive to publish advisory notices and enough for individual companies to look again at their Risk Assessments and Method Statements. 

Yet, in the sphere of mental health, 749 suicides has not moved the RAMS needle one iota.  There has been no attempt to relieve the stresses of working within construction and demolition; no attempt to improve the job and financial security of those within it.  The industry has chosen awareness over action.  For the record, being aware of an open manhole does not prevent someone from falling down it - Replacing the manhole cover, however, just might.

Rather than moving to address the rising tide of mental health issues and suicides, the industry has decided to surf upon that wave, posting self-congratulatory messages on its Facebook and LinkedIn pages as it does so.

Meanwhile, 749 of its number - those the sector claims to be its greatest asset - have paid the ultimate price for a life (and, ultimately, death) in construction.