Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Talk The Tauc from the Association of Union Constructors. In this podcast, we explore the latest labor trends, industry insights, and important issues in the world of construction. Join us for conversations with industry leaders, subject matter experts, and innovative visionaries as we discuss how we are building the world of tomorrow. Talk The Tauc presented by the Association of Union Constructors.
[00:00:26] Kirk: Welcome back to Talk The Tauc, the podcast of the Association of Union Constructors, where we bring together leaders shaping the future of union construction across North America. Today's conversation addresses something that affects every job site, every crew, and every leadership team, but often doesn't get talked about directly. We're discussing suicide
prevention and mental health in construction.
[00:00:45] Our industry leads the nation in many categories, productivity, complexity, and infrastructure delivery, but we also lead in something no industry wants to lead in, suicide risk. This episode is not about awareness for awareness sake, it's about implementation. It's about what contractors, CEOs, safety directors, project leaders, and labor partners can actually do, starting now to better protect their people.
[00:01:09] I'm joined by Wendy Farmer and Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas, who bring deep expertise in suicide prevention, crisis systems, and evidence-based mental health strategies. Wendy, Sally, thank you so much for being here with us today.
[00:01:22] Sally: Thanks for having us here.
[00:01:23] Wendy: Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
[00:01:25] Kirk: Today, we're obviously talking about some more serious topics, but before we do, I always want to, with all of our guests that we've been doing for the last two years of the show, is start off with something a little bit more personal, a little bit more fun. What is the last song you had stuck in your head, the last song that you just couldn't break free from?
[00:01:41] Wendy: I was still thinking about the Super Bowl a little bit.
[00:01:43] Kirk: So Bad Bunny, Bad Bunny.
[00:01:45] Wendy: Yeah, I got a little Bad Bunny. I'm a Martinez. My Spanish is not the good, but I caught enough of it to be excited. So a little bit of Bad Bunny.
[00:01:53] Sally: I think mine's also football-related. The song that caught me off guard was actually, I got last-minute tickets to the AFC Championship where the Broncos were playing the Patriots. Never again will I have that opportunity. And it was snowy and crazy.
[00:02:08] And they had a replay moment, and they started to play Jay Geil's Freeze Frame. And I was like, "Oh, I haven't heard this song since I was a freshman in high school." And I didn't tell my mother I was going, and I got in a lot of trouble. But I was like, "Free Frame?" Yeah. So that's the song that came into my mind when I was like, "That was stuck in my head for that day."
[00:02:32] Kirk: One of my favorite things about that question and why I always start off with that is it actually ends up telling you a lot about a person. Just in general, I've got some rough and tumble construction workers on here that have had songs from Sofia the First stuck in their head, which tells me they have young daughters. Or they have other people, everything from classical music to Freeze Frame. It just kind of tells me what your environment is and what kind of sticks out to you. It kind of frames the conversation a little bit better for me.
[00:02:59] Sally: Yeah. So "Rebellious Child of the 80s" is what I told you right there.
[00:03:02] Kirk: More or less, and I appreciate it. Let's get started just with our big picture. The construction industry is consistently showing elevated suicide rates compared to basically every other industry. I'm also in the Army Reserve, and I will say that the veterans are the other one. But then when you start looking at the cross-section of construction workers and veterans, it's not a clean number because it's basically the same number. It's a blurry Venn diagram. The Venn diagram is a blurry circle. And so why is it that construction is so prone to this?
[00:03:35] Sally: I think there's a lot of overlap, like your blurry Venn diagram image there, where there are strong values of stoicism and problem-solving and decisiveness. That's like the superpowers of both populations. But every superpower has its underbelly, and this is the underbelly for both populations where they don't feel like they can reach out for help and support when they need it, and then the problems faster and they get worse.
[00:04:02] I think the difference between the two populations, really, there's several, is about how the community views and perceives and supports first responders, military. We all are very well aware of the trauma that people are exposed to, the sacrifices that are made to protect the community, all of those things we're aware of. And so, not always, but often there's a little bit of gratitude, recognition, acknowledgement that I think can help.
[00:04:30] I don't think construction gets much of that at all. In fact, largely to the general population, construction is largely invisible. We don't realize the sacrifices that are made, the trauma that people are exposed to, the wear and tear on the body, the exposure to the elements, the travel away from family, the feast and famine of the industries. Nobody in the general population is aware of all that. They have all these stressors, these additional stressors, and very little support from the general community. So that sense of isolation and suffering and struggle happens in silos, and I think that adds to the problem.
[00:05:03] Wendy: And then just a real reticence about help seeking, but it's not strong to seek help and fear about seeking help that just compounds and then leads to other kinds of coping mechanisms. People are dealing with physical pain and brain pain as we call it in our world, and they're doing things to help manage that that aren't helping. And then we get into substances and all of the things that make things more difficult and cause even more stress at work and at home.
[00:05:33] Kirk: It is really true from the construction industry where I worked for the last several years and the military, which again, like I said, I'm in the reserve, but I'm also a military brat. I was raised by a career soldier. If there are two cultures that could be summed up by, "Hey, man up and get it done," it's the military and construction.Those are the populations for that.
[00:05:54] And my father, I'm going back and forth with him right now. He's in the hospital and stuff, and the VA has been helpful to a point, but so little of his majorly service-connected injuries are connected to his file. When he got out and was like, "What about this injury that I know you received in this skirmish? I know this and this." And he's like, "Oh yeah, none of that." He's like, "You couldn't go in and tell them you were hurt. Then they'd take you off the job and then everyone would..." It's to your point. It's a whole culture of suck it up and get it done.
[00:06:24] And these are the cultures that we're seeing the highest prevalence of these issues of suicide and things of that nature. There's a lot of well-intentioned messaging out there. The posters, the toolboxes, the awareness weeks. From a research standpoint, is it working?
[00:06:41] Sally: I have a big answer to this. Whenever people first get into this work, mental health work, the first answer that comes out is, "What's the problem?" and it's stigma. Then they think, "Well, we got to talk about the stigma of mental illness." Well, I'll tell you what. Talking about the stigma of mental illness does not reduce stigma. There's a whole body of literature on stigma reduction and it doesn't work. That does not work. Talking about the stigma of mental health, talking about the stigma of suicide doesn't work.
[00:07:10] In fact, it reinforces the connection over and over and over again. What the research shows and what actually reduces stigma is multifaceted and has a lot of things. I can have stigma for myself. I can have stigma for someone else. Organizations can have stigmatized policies, all of these things. But what actually reduces that isn't even mental health awareness. At best, mental health awareness might have what we call the state trooper effect, where people change their attitudes and behaviors when the thing is right in front of them.
[00:07:35] But as soon as it goes back into the rear of your mirror, everybody goes back to what they were doing before, thinking, feeling, attitudes, etc. The only thing that has a lasting impact is what the researchers call the contact approach, which basically means, "I get to know you. I get to know you as a human being. I understand your story. I see that we have far more in common with each other than we have differences."
[00:07:55] This goes across all kinds of othering that we do. When I see you as another human being, that's a lot more like me than different, that I understand why people are the way they are, then it's a human issue, not another issue. That's where the barriers start to come down. That's where we're like, "Oh, it's just Joe. I know Joe. Joe's like me." Now I have a different feeling about what Joe's life and recovery means or what Joe's kid's bipolar condition means because I like Joe and I know Joe and Joe's like me.
[00:08:24] That's what brings down the barriers. I like to call it bias, prejudice, and discrimination because it hits a little harder with our own personal responsibility to it. But it's our connection to each other and really deeply understanding other's experiences. We get that through storytelling. We get that through sharing and peer support and many other ways that can work. I think some of the general messages, number one, about talking about stigma all the time and number two, what I call pounding the drum of death data.
[00:08:50] Again, I understand the death data is jarring. It is eye-opening and it creates a lot of urgency when we understand how many people are dying by suicide and how much higher it is in the general population or overdose or whatever it is, levels of addiction, all of that eye-opening. But when we only talk about the death data, then we don't have hope that things are changing. It becomes overwhelming. We also need to mix up and have information about recovery and help works and prevention works and so on.
[00:09:17] Wendy: Hope is just as contagious, if not more so. You can see that Joe got help and Joe's like me and Joe has a family like me. It makes it a lot less daunting to ask for help if someone else just like you has done it and has had good success with it.
[00:09:34] Sally: Yes, I love that body of research so much Wendy. I'm so glad you brought it up. We call it the Papa Geno Effect. Google it. We know that sometimes suicide is feared because if we talk about it, maybe other people will get an idea in their head and this is a huge myth that everybody carries around with them.
[00:09:50] Other effect is so exciting. Hope is contagious. Help giving it, help offering is contagious. Compassion is contagious. We can equally spread those messages when we model this is how it looks like in the real world. This is how it happens. This is people recover all the time. People help each other all the time and that's the messaging that we'd like to put out there.
[00:10:10] Kirk: I like that. I understand it's a peer-to-peer, crew-based approach. Hope is contagious. What does that messaging look like? We have these job sites where a lot of it is you're head down, you're working, you're up on a roof, you're down a trench. They're not necessarily cubical, sitting, chatting environments.
[00:10:29] There isn't necessarily a, with the exception of let's grab a beer after dinner or after work, how do we get to know that peer base, that bias, how do we approach that in these environments to get them to know those things, to have that hope spread in an environment that isn't about chatting with your coworker?
[00:10:47] Sally: Well, it might not be the same thing as people having team meetings in a little office area, but there is a sense of teamwork that is inherent in construction. People have to work together. The safety culture has really made the point of you got to look out for one another because of the situational awareness. You're going to see something maybe somebody else isn't going to see, and you're going to be able to reduce harm or save a life.
[00:11:13] Same idea here. What I love is when the safety folks stepped into the arena, we worked a lot with the Smart Union since 2013 and then the UA and the ironworkers. The safety cultures are so strong. We just say, "Bake it in. Bake it into what you're already doing about safety. Make this a job site health and safety issue and do all the things you usually do for safety, but do them for mental health and well-being." Then the lights went on. They're like, "Oh, well, we do toolbox talks.
[00:11:40] Oh, we have safety moments and stand-downs. Oh, we could bake it into managing by walking around, just checking in on how people are doing. Are they following safety procedures? Can we check in there about what's going on in their lives?" Just even a three-minute thing makes a huge difference where people feel seen beyond the labor that they're doing. I think another model that has worked really well is on larger job sites where there are on-site medics.
[00:12:07] People trust that the medics have some credentialing. They trust that the medics are there for no other reason than to keep them safe and healthy. Teaching up, skilling up for some of the medics on the larger job sites has been another great approach. Bring the help to them rather than making them have to go to help.
[00:12:22] Then there's just some folks that are really good at this. Don't rule them out. I would say, actually, the military, the folks that are from the military transitioning into construction, and the folks that are in long-term recovery are some of our best peers because military, since day one, has sometimes been force-fed suicide prevention training to the point of its detriment, but they've had enough exposure to it that they get it on a really deep level. Then people in long-term recovery have also felt the power of storytelling, the power of peers. They get it, and they are really effective in driving forward change and connecting people as a warm bridge into resources that are trustworthy.
[00:13:03] Wendy: Some of it is just really organic, too. I read an article recently about glue employees, about how they're the ones that, even though they may not be in charge, they hold things together. What we know in suicide prevention is that connection is one of the most protective factors we can build. Even if it's just someone who is good at saying, "Let's go have dinner after work," or, "Let's talk for just a few minutes," those people are really key to making sure people feel connected to their work and to each other.
[00:13:35] Kirk: No, I appreciate all that. It's funny. I often am curious of our listeners. I know we have a lot of veterans, and I know we have a lot of former service. I know we have a lot that aren't. I know my experience. You said something sadly in there that resonated with me a lot. With the military, we're forced to fed it so much often to its detriment. It's so true. I have sat through so many suicide briefings that it's an absurd number. I'm not trying to be glib when I say it does make you want to kill yourself. Somewhat cynically and not cynically. At the end of it, you're like, "This is awful."
[00:14:09] Sally: Here's the other kicker that I think is true now for both, again. My husband's a Marine. He goes to the VA, and he might be there to get his teeth cleaned. He'll be asked five times, "Are you suicidal? Are you suicidal? Are you suicidal?" He's like, "It wasn't this morning."
[00:14:24] I think one of the things that both have done, again, this is their detriment part, is focused so much on the individual. If the individual just sought help and got help, then everything would be great. Yeah, no. It's not that way, because there are systems at play and cultures at play that are far more than that individual going to seek help that no matter how much counseling we get for them, we still put them back into very traumatizing and toxic situations. They're not going to thrive.
[00:14:55] One of the things that I say gets deflected all the time is, "What is the military's responsibility for creating an environment where people can thrive?" They do it sometimes really well, but there's a lot of other times where they're really increasing suffering exponentially. Same thing is true with construction. The toxicity of the bullying and the hazing and the harassment and the discrimination and the pulling people away from their families from months on end, no one would really thrive very well in any of that context. Why do we expect construction workers not to thrive?
[00:15:23] Kirk: The other thing that the military, and I've seen some construction messaging doing that I wanted to ask about, is some of the things that I see in briefing a lot is, "We've got to get out of this. It really can mess up cohesion. It can really mess up productivity. It really can mess up all these different things."
[00:15:40] I finally just somewhat recently raised my hand and said, "If there was someone in our unit that was struggling with this, do you understand that you just spent 45 minutes talking about how bad their suicide would be for us and how unproductive it would be? All you've just said is, "Man, suicide is really a drag for us, so we need to fix it so we're not inconvenienced by it?" You're understanding that that was the entire I'm the PR guy, so I understand that's the shadow message of what you just said.
[00:16:06] We don't care about Steve, but if he kills himself, it'll be really inconvenient. That can't be what we're talking about, which leads me to my next question of why is it so important that these are executive-level conversations and not just HR-level conversations, and not just suicide-level conversations, but actual leadership-level conversations?
[00:16:27] Wendy: It's so important that leaders understand that the kind of environments that they are responsible to create and foster need to make sure that they're taking into account whether people are in pain or not. I mean, just what you just said, when there's so much focus on productivity and we see all the statistics about how depression causes this many days of missed work and there's a gross amount that impacts the economy.
[00:16:52] Those are the numbers that you see in it, but you're right. What you hear from that is, "Well, it's really bad for the economy if someone is in pain." We need to flip that on its edge and say, "It's bad for us if our brethren are in pain. It's bad for all of us." It's a really important culture that needs to be fostered in a very different way.
[00:17:13] Kirk: The language is so important. It's a very different language than
that productivity thing is an easy metric for someone who is number-based to look at and go, "But we need to think about this very differently and talk about it so much differently than we are."
[00:17:26] Sally: Yes, and because I would also say construction is very money-driven. If you don't make a business case for it, which I'm totally with you, for after I was not making a business case, I'm like, "This is not about money. This is about human dignity and about helping." Yeah, it becomes a nice to have. I call it that. Isn't it cute? Isn't it cute? We have a mental health program versus, no, this is absolutely key to operations about retaining and recruiting the best people, about having a culture that looks out for one another. That's going to permeate into all kinds of things.
[00:17:59] Not that people are depressed or drag, but that when we get this right, all boats rise. When you make the business case, it hits executives in a slightly different way. "Oh, it benefits everything. Okay, great." It's not just an offshoot, an awareness day thing, "Woo-hoo, we checked the box." No, this actually impacts all of the operations and it is important
to everything. We're having a leadership roundtable coming up at the Construction Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference in Portland in February.
[00:18:29] We've let the executives know we're not going to be talking about warning signs. We're not going to be talking about symptoms to look out for. We're not going to be talking about how to have the conversation. We're not going to be talking about what the resources are. You can get all that stuff elsewhere. We're going to talk about what you're going to do as executives at the top of the food chain to change the systems and culture of construction. Because if you don't do anything differently, we're going to still have the trickle down problems that we always have.
[00:18:51]What are those policies that need to be changed in procurement, in job safety analysis, in all these other things, in your productivity metrics, in your system analyses, in your five-year planning? What are the system and cultural changes that you're going to make so that five years from now, we're not still having the same suffering that we're having today? I'm excited. We're going to talk about psychosocial hazards.
[00:19:18] We're going to analyze what are the root causes that are driving distress and despair that are work-related that they have some control over. We might not be able to get rid of all of them, but what can we do to mitigate someone? It's their responsibility to help come up with that. They've really solved a safety issue in so many ways by having that mindset. They're going to be able to do it here too.
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[00:19:54] Kirk: Now, obviously knowing that we can't possibly replace or even come close to touching on everything you're going to do in that workshop, but rather than my next question being, "So what are the warning signs we're looking out for?" Knowing that our listener is who you're talking about. It's all leadership. What are some of those top things? What are some of those programs that they should start thinking about? The ways that in five years we're not having the same conversation of, "Is this person withdrawn? Is this person this or that?" What are the real things that we can do for systemic change?
[00:20:28] Wendy: Certainly offering resources. I can talk a little bit about how 988 fits into that and making sure that everyone has that on their tool belt. As we talked about, it's really important that people see mental health challenges and substance use challenges on par with medical ones. Just like we've taken safety seriously and protected people from being injured, we also need to connect people to behavioral health services.
[00:20:53] 988 has been in place for many, many years, but it got its three-digit number two years ago. It is a 24/7 resource for anyone in emotional distress, certainly for anyone who's having a mental health or substance use related concern. It's also for people who love them. If an individual is not willing to reach out on their own and there's a loved one who is concerned or a coworker who's concerned about someone else, they can reach out and get immediate support from someone who's trained, a compassionate crisis counselor who's trained to help walk them through how to help another person, even if that person is not quite ready to reach out themselves.
[00:21:32] People can make test calls. Sally talks about this all the time and I really appreciate it. Hopefully, we have the network in a better place where they're expecting these calls to come in. I think it's going better, but make a test call. Call with someone. Have a supervisor call to say, "Hey, this is how it works." You do get an immediate response from someone and show someone how it works so that they know what to do when it happens to them. Press one is for veterans. Someone who specializes in caring for veterans, you can press one. You don't have to. You can press two for Spanish speaking services.
[00:22:07] Sally: Yeah. I always press every audience that I'm into, make the call. Make the call before you make the call and especially leadership. Leaders have to go first because if you're not willing to do something that you expect everybody else to do, that is a problem because they'll look up to you and say, "Well, they're not needing 988. They don't need our employee assistance program."
[00:22:27] That is what leaders do. Apparently, if I want to be a leader, I don't need it either. I said, "No, you call." Now, I've coached them on how to talk to 988 and we're coaching 988 on how to expect these test calls. Just call them and say, "I'm some wacky workshop leader. Told me to call 988 to see how it worked. I have a couple of questions. You have five minutes." Either the call center will say, "No, we're super busy. Call in the back line or call back later." More often than not, they're like, "Thank you. Thank you for calling. I'm so glad you're curious about what we're doing." Now, they have a conversation.
[00:23:00] Once they've made a call, that test run increases the likelihood that they're actually going to call when it's needed exponentially because they've got the confidence. They know what to expect. They can predict for the person that they're trying to help or for themselves like how it's going to go. I also say, too, leaders, if you're not willing to even do a test drive with your EAP, your employee assistance program, or your member assistance program, how do you expect other people to take that action?
[00:23:23] Go first. Make the calls. Maybe have a session or two so you understand it. Believe me, everybody's got issues that they're working on. Everybody does. Somewhere in your life, you got a sore spot. Everybody's got issues. Go understand how it works. Then you can say, and I quote, "When I called 988, here's how it went down. Here's why I think it's going to be an excellent resource for us right now. When I called the EAP and took a session, here's how it went down. I filled out some forms, and then I talked to the person that got me in and within a week."
[00:23:51] They were really helpful or not. A lot of times, people call their employee assistance program or whatever and find out it's a disaster. Well, that's really good to know before you need it.That's one of the things when you ask, "What are we going to talk about the leaders?" One of the main messages is leaders got to go first. If you can't prioritize it, again, how do you expect other people to prioritize it?
[00:24:10] The other things we're going to be talking about at the Leadership Roundtable are those systems and cultural change pieces that we now know after decades of research are work-related suicide issues. It's not a personal issue. It's not that they were born with genetics that predisposed them to addiction or depression. It's not their conflict with their partner. It is a work-related, we call them psychosocial hazards.
[00:24:33] Just like holes and wires exposed, these are things that are happening at work that are causing harm to people. There's a bunch of them. They're connected to what? Suicide. You take out all the other variables. The magical researchers can minimize all the other variables and look at the direct impact of these things. One whole body of them is what we call job design issues. Lack of autonomy, lack of variety, effort, reward, and balance, all those kinds of things.
[00:25:01] A huge bunch of them in job design issues. Another one is about toxic relationships at work. Hazing, bullying, discrimination, prejudice. The number one part of that bucket is actually conflict. Pretty significant conflict with your direct supervisor. Training out both sides on how to deal with that is really helpful. We've known for forever work. Family imbalance is a huge stressor for people, especially when there's tremendous problems in one side or the other.
[00:25:28] They spill over. We also have a lot of connection to the meaning-making of my work. If I feel like I'm a cog in the wheel of somebody else's profit making or somebody else's achievement and my work is monotonous and I don't care, my detachment from this thing that I do 10, 12 hours a day wears on my sense of who I am. That's also connected to suicide. Then there's a whole bunch of other things.
[00:25:51] Exposure to trauma at work, work-related norms of poor coping, whether that's substance use or whatever, fill-in-the-blank gambling. That's kind of reinforced at work. Sleep deprivation. That's another huge one for construction. They just aren't sleeping between the commutes and the stress. All of these are work-related hazards. I will tell you that the global conversation on this is huge. We are not having this conversation in the United States so much, but it's coming.
[00:26:18] It's definitely coming. OSHA has been listening and leaning in about what is this psychosocial hazard thing and how do we mitigate it. The same thing you did with the other safety hazards you can do here. It's an exciting time to also say it's probably 50/50, 50% an individual predisposition or something happening in their personal life and about 50% other things in the environment, work, community stress, whatever it is. We have to address those larger issues as well.
[00:26:45] Kirk: I appreciate that. There's definitely a lot in there that people can address and think about. I want to take one step back to the 988 thing before we close up because you talked about that and I think it's extremely true. Everyone remembers being a kid and being taught about dial 9-1-1 and there was this thing about dial 9-1-1. It was both, "This is who you call in an emergency, but under no circumstance call it." I remember I was in my little late teens, early 20s. I was like, "Am I allowed to call 9-1-1? Is this an emergency? I don't think this is a real emergency. Yes, the house is on fire, but let me call the non-emergency number."
[00:27:19] That's a real story, by the way. I literally at 18 years old was afraid to call 9-1-1 despite the fact there was smoke in my house because I was like, "I don't know if this is a real emergency." Dial 9-8-8 has that same for many kind of vibe of, "This is when you call when you're in crisis." Well, I'm not in a real crisis. I'm having a down date. If you walk me through what that experience is, for those people, yes, you're encouraging them to make the call.
[00:27:41] Let's take it one step more training wheels than that. When you call 9-8-8, press 1 for veteran, press 2 for Spanish, they push one of those numbers. What happens? What are they going to hear? What's going to happen? What is de-stignify, demystify, and de-traumify that phone call for people before they try it?
[00:27:57] Wendy: I love that question because what we're really trying to do, the name of the line even changed in 2022 to the suicide and crisis lifeline. So it's not just focused on suicide. I think that helps a little bit. But what we really do want people to know is that I'd rather you call before it's a crisis while we still can do something. Let's not call when things are so bad. It's okay to call if you just have a question.
[00:28:22] If you're feeling some distress or you feel it coming on, no one's going to tell you, "I'm sorry. Your crisis isn't big enough." A crisis is self-defined. A crisis to you is very different than a crisis to me. We want people to know that when in doubt, just make the call. But how that looks, you go through an IVR. You're asked whether you want to press 1 or 2 to speak with the Veterans Crisis Line or Spanish speaking services.
[00:28:47] After that, you're connected to a counselor whose main job is to ask you why you're calling and how they can help. We tried for it not to be a laundry list of demographic or questions. It's really, "Why are you calling today and how can we help?" It's really about the relationship between the person who's calling and the call taker. That's where the magic happens. It's the connection. There's not anything special that the crisis counselor knows.
[00:29:16] Certainly, they know what to do in an emergency and all of those things, but it's about the connection. When we do research on how the line works, what comes up over and over again, it's that interaction and connection with the call taker and the help seeker. That's the magic ingredient. If someone is going to listen to me without judgment, who's going to try to help me navigate what I'm navigating and help me make decisions for myself.
[00:29:38] Kirk: That sounds awesome and wonderful. I really appreciate that amount of information. If someone's calling, what are the next steps? Are they going to get a resource and connect it to something else? The police aren't going to show up at my house. Demystify the fears that people are like, "I can't call because I don't want the swat kicking down my door because they think I'm suicidal."
[00:29:56] Wendy: That's a really common question. Over and over again, the research bears out that emergency services are only contacted about 2% of the time as a result of a 988 call. Half that time, it's because the individual said, "I need you to call them because I've done something different on myself already." It's a very small number. It is a real fear, but these counselors are trained that emergency services intervention are truly a last resort. They bend over backwards with that individual to talk through the situation and get them to a safer place so that that kind of intervention doesn't need to happen.
[00:30:36] Certainly, there are times that it does, but we do everything possible to make sure that people are connected to services that they want to be connected to. Sometimes they don't want a connection at all. Sometimes they don't want a service. Sometimes the call is what is needed in the moment, but all of the centers are trained and have resources on hand to help connect people who want to be connected. I'm glad you asked about the emergency services and the police intervention because that is a real fear. As we dig into the research more and more, it really is happening a lot less often than you would actually think. We're really proud of that.
[00:31:15] Sally: Yeah, right. Listen to the folks to call from the construction industry. They come back so pleasantly surprised. They're like, "That wasn't hard. They were really kind." I'm like, "I'm not sure what you expected, but yes, of course. There's nothing that you're at and have compassion for you. Yes." I would also just want to make two more points to make sure that this
doesn't get missed.
[00:31:38] A lot of times it's not the person in crisis who's calling. It's their support person, whether that's their manager at work or their partner or their buddy or their parent or whatever. That is so okay and so encouraged. I don't remember what those stats are, but it's a big number, like a third or a quarter or something.
[00:31:53] Are the people in the inner circle that are calling or even an acquaintance that said, "They sounded off. I just need to check this out with someone." You can call on someone else's behalf and keep them anonymous. I have someone in my neighborhood. They're walking around without pants on or whatever it is. You're worried about someone. You don't even really know. Yeah, call. They're going to help you walk through a thing. Then the last thing I want to hear from Wendy's point of view is the power of the follow-up because that's another service that 988 does that people aren't aware of.
[00:32:24] Wendy: During the course of that call, if it becomes apparent that someone is at high risk, they are offered the opportunity for a follow-up call. We don't automatically follow up because we want to seek your permission to do that. We want consent. People sometimes don't want people calling them back, but we do ask for permission. Those follow-up calls are so critical.
[00:32:44] Sally has seen the research as well. There are people who say that the follow-up call is actually what saved my life. I still was in distress. Knowing that someone was consistently willing to reach back out to me to check on me meant a whole lot. Follow-up is a really critical piece.
[00:33:03] Kirk: Amazing. I've known people that have been afraid to call just because they were so afraid of everything. They don't want police knocking on their door. They don't want the follow-up. They don't. Yes, getting that training call is really important, but just understanding it did not occur to me till this conversation today that you didn't have to call for yourself. You could be calling for a loved one or an employee or a colleague. That had not occurred to me at all till this conversation.
[00:33:29] That's really awesome to know. Before we close, as we're wrapping up, I just want to ask each of you if there's one thing, whether it's an executive changing something or other organization, or if there's one mindset shift, whether as an individual or as a leader, that people could be having about this conversation, about 988, about workforce job safety in this way, what would that mind shift be?
[00:33:50] Wendy: I think to see it on par with a medical emergency. If you have a heart attack anywhere in America today, people know exactly what to do. Your coworkers know what to do. 911 knows what to do. Everyone knows what to do, and they do it. My hope would be that as we continue educating people, that if people are in great pain from mental health or substance use issues, that people know what to do. They have a plan, and it's the same. It's very consistent. It would be when you're responding to a heart attack that everyone knows what to do.
[00:34:21] Sally: Yeah, and I would say that, and bake it into a much bigger strategy. Think about what your vision is for your organization and how does this play in. What's your recruitment and retention strategy? Bake it in. What's your safety plan? Break it in. Your HR policies related to a whole bunch of things. Bake it in. Everything you're doing, think about how is this showing up in people's well-being, and get outside of the crisis moment.
[00:34:47] It's just like, again, heart attack is a really challenging problem to solve. But heart pain, high blood pressure, cholesterol, we could probably solve that. Upstream, how do we get them eating healthy and exercising well? Well, that's going to solve a whole bunch of problems downstream. The same idea here. Look at the strategy. Think strategically, not just responding to crisis. Strategically, what does this look like all throughout all the permutations of the organization?
[00:35:10] That's a big mindset shift that people have because they're 90 percent thinking, "How am I going to respond to the crisis?" Which is a good thing to think about, but if that's all you think about, that's like having. We're going to stop death by heart attack, and the only tool we have in our toolbox are the AEDs. Well, everybody would think that's ridiculous. We got to teach people CR. We got to teach people CR. Get your cholesterol down. Yeah. Bigger picture, bake it in.
[00:35:32] Kirk: No, I really appreciate both of those. Yes, treat it like a heart attack. Exactly. Treat it like a heart attack. It is an emergency. We know what to do, but also that doesn't mean put an AED in everyone's truck. It means eat more broccoli. Very good. Yeah. And other things too. Absolutely.
[00:35:48] Thank you so much, Wendy and Sally. This has been an awesome conversation. I really appreciate all you guys are doing and continue to do. If people wanted to find out more about your leadership summit or other resources, where could they contact you or where would they find out more?
[00:36:02] Sally: So the conference is coming up in a week. I can't believe it. Constructionmentalhealth.org is the portal for the conference information. Constructionworkingmines is a portal for all kinds of construction information. And to connect with me, just my name, sallyspencerthomas.com.
[00:36:17] Kirk: Awesome. Hey, thank you so much. And Wendy, is there resources or a way to contact you?
[00:36:22] Wendy: 988lifeline.org is where to reach us all. And you can chat through 988lifeline.org or text or call 988.
[00:36:34] Kirk: Wendy, Sally, thank you so much for bringing both clarity and practicality to this conversation. For our listeners, suicide prevention and construction isn't about replacing existing safety systems. It's about strengthening them. Mental health is not separate from safety culture. It is part of it. If today's safety discussion prompted action in your organization, that's the goal. Start the conversation, train the leaders, integrate resources like 988 thoughtfully, build systems that protect workers, not just from physical hazards, but from invisible ones as well.
[00:37:01] To learn more about talk's workforce and safety initiatives, visit tauc.org. And as always, thank you for the work you do every day to build safe, lead responsibly, and strengthen the union construction industry. This has been Talk the Tauc. I'm Kirk Westwood. We'll see you next time.
