About Construction Working Minds™
Overview
Complex public health problems like suicide are best addressed with comprehensive and sustained approaches that address issues from several angles and through multiple systems. The Working Minds program is an evidence-informed model that uses strategic partnerships and capacity-building in the workplace to leverage and sustain significant change for positive mental health and resiliency. Together working collaboratively with several national partners, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas helps construction companies and professional associations build strategies for suicide prevention, mental health promotion and resilience.
Workplaces Called to Action by CONNECTing FOR LIFE
Ireland’s national suicide prevention strategy, Connecting for Life, is a whole-of-society strategy to co-ordinate and focus our national effort to reduce the loss of life by suicide.
According to the strategy, “Effective suicide prevention strategies must be rooted in robust data about the risk and protective factors affecting particular population groups. Identifying what groups are vulnerable to suicidal behaviour and trying to identify what puts them at risk and what can help to protect them is essential in designing effective responses.” The Construction Industry in Ireland is an area that has been incorporating effective suicide prevention strategies in an effort to reduce the loss of life by suicide in the industry
Working-Aged Men Most at Risk for Deaths of Despair
Of the almost 400 people who die by suicide every year, about between 75-80% are working aged men.
More on “Deaths of Despair” and working aged men:
Higher risk of suicide among middle-aged Irish men identified in report
Men in construction sectors ‘account for half of male suicides’
Almost 1 in 2 men who took their own lives had worked in construction