Suicide - The Construction Industry's Dark Secret

September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and while suicide prevention is important to address year-round, this month is dedicated to sharing resources and stories to shed light on this uncomfortable and often stigmatized topic. 

For many, myself included, mental health and suicide are difficult subjects to acknowledge, let alone talk about.  

In today’s episode we are going to dig deep into both. Why? Because there is a genuine crisis facing our industry. Regrettably, construction workers lead the way nationally in suicide related deaths, nearly 4 times higher than their non-construction industry counterparts. Let that sink in. Every year 17 out of 100,000 people take their own lives.    For construction workers that number is 54. That’s a staggering and disheartening statistic and it needs to change. If you haven’t suffered the loss of a co-worker, family member or friend due to suicide consider yourself fortunate. Many others aren’t so lucky. It truly doesn’t need to be this way.  

Our guest today is Deborah Zwetchkenbaum. She a mental health professional with Lines for Life, a Portland based, non-profit organization that offers help and hope to individuals and communities and is dedicated to preventing substance abuse and suicide.  

We will begin our conversation by discussing the factors that lead to the high levels of suicide in our industry and why we are so vulnerable as construction workers. 

Next, we’ll learn to identifying the signs of someone who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. 

Later we’ll unpack how to talk to someone who has expressed suicidal thoughts and why addressing the issue head on is not as bad as you might think. 

And we’ll finish our conversation by understanding what Question, Persuade and Refer training is and how our Regional Council is making it available to all our members. 

For more information check out the links below:

https://gettrainedtohelp.com/en/

https://preventconstructionsuicide.com/

A more light hearted look at a serious subject
https://lnkd.in/gNZyQpy

https://www.linesforlife.org/

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