A new partnership between the Calgary Construction Association (CCA) and Headversity is aimed at providing mental health support and workforce resiliency.
On Nov. 12, the two organizations launched a Workforce Resilience App, which has been designed to provide practical and anonymous mental health supports and programming to individuals employed in the construction industry.
“Construction is a demanding job, and the reality is, it in itself can have some stresses. There could be an injury that led to medication that then created an addiction cycle. It could be workload stress. It could be working away from home. It could be financial stress, because you got laid off,” said Bill Black, CEO of the Calgary Construction Association.
“It’s a predominantly male industry on the tools, and males are generally not very good at personal mental health management. Somehow we were taught… that you have to pull up your big boy pants and pretend that you’re not hurt. There’s that sort of societal thing that it all combines.”
Statistics showing that the construction industry has by far the most amount of suicides for any industry in North America, meant that there had to be a better way of addressing mental health needs, said Black.
The new app builds on the success of the CCA’s Tailgate Toolkit introduced in January and has already reached roughly a quarter of Calgary’s construction workforce, and approximately 10 per cent of the construction workers in the greater Calgary area.
“Basic mental health skills like how to have a mental health conversation, how to reach out for help, how to manage energy, how to manage sleep, these are core mental health skills that we think that the construction industry deserves,” said Dr. Ryan Todd, psychiatrist and president of Headversity.
Providing confidential access was one of the ways that Headversity is addressing the stigma against receiving mental health within the construction industry.
“When I sometimes have patients from this industry, and I’ve asked them what stopped you from reaching out? They’ll say, I’ thought I was going to lose my job. I thought I was going to lose a friend over this, or I didn’t want to look weak,'” he said.
The app also provides supports for smaller firms in the industry that might not be large enough to have dedicated human resource departments, or even formal programs for mental health, said Black.
He said he hoped the new app would lead to other labour intensive industries also providing similar mental health supports for their workers.
“One of the reasons that these statistics exist in our industry is we are a labour-intensive industry, but there are other labour-intensive industries; agriculture, tourism, meat processing plants and other other such industries that have a big footprint of people that are all part of their world, who potentially are susceptible to the same the same issues that are affecting society at large,” he said.
“I would hope that it’s exponential, because a life is a life, regardless of industry.”
