Industry mental health snapshots.

Content warning: Frequent mentions of suicide.

CONSTRUCTION

Data is a good way to gauge the mental health of any sector and for construction the picture is alarming.

There were 4,143 suicides among construction workers (male and female) in Australia between 2001 to 2019, the University of Melbourne said in a report to Mates In Construction in August 2022. Male construction workers were nearly twice as likely to suicide compared to men in other occupations. In other words, nearly 220 lives a year are lost to suicide in the construction industry. (Previous research by Deakin University showed the number was about 190 a year.)

To further put this into context, around 1,300 veterans and serving personnel have died by suicide in the past two decades. Australia had 641,000 veterans in 2017 (the ABS). Those tragic losses are being investigated by the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. The construction sector employs 1.2 million people, nearly 10 percent of the working population (ABS).

Construction workers are six times more likely to die from suicide than an accident at work, says Mates In Construction. Construction is 87 percent male dominated, and men account for 75 percent of suicides in Australia.

A quarter of construction workers had a mental health condition, according to a 2014 report by PwC. That compares to 20 percent of the population, as shown in a landmark ABS 2007 survey. The Black Dog Institute says more work needs to be done to reduce stigma around mental health in construction and change organisational culture.

Key challenges (collated from a variety of sources):
-- Insecure work, exacerbated by shifts in supply chains and other COVID-19 disruptions. Workers employed on projects that might last weeks/months to a few years.
-- Pressure to deliver. High job demand over a short period of time. Six-day working weeks.
-- Separation from family for remote workers, difficulty forming bonds with different crews.
-- Bullying and harassment in an industry whose macho image is reinforced relentlessly by TV and social media ads for cars, sporting goods, alcohol, gambling and clothing.
-- Sexual harassment

MEDIA

80-100 percent of journalists have been exposed to potentially traumatic events: Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

In Australia, 31.5 percent of workers in the Information, Media and Telecommunication sector had a mental health condition, one of the highest in any industry, according to the 2014 report by PwC.

One in 10 Canadian journalists thought about suicide after covering difficult stories, according to landmark research published in May 2022. More than half Canadian journalists had sought medical help for work-related stress and trauma. And only 15 percent of Canadian media workers had trauma training, 33 percent for managers and executives.

Technology has changed the way the media gets stories. Raw, unedited footage pours into newsrooms, usually seen first by young staff with little real-world experience. My sense is that vicarious trauma is at least an equal, if not a greater risk to journalists, than what we would have called frontline trauma in the days of the Iraq War. That is because of the sheer number of journalists potentially exposed to distressing imagery. The Canadian research showed frequent trauma exposure wasn’t necessarily in “frontline” jobs. Production assistants, video editors, librarians and hosts/presenters had high exposure.

A 2015 survey showed unexpected exposure to distressing video had more impact than when someone was prepared; sound was also distressing or when content reminded an individual of personal experiences. One of the biggest obstacles to seeking help is shame. Journalists might think that because they’re not in the field, witnessing events close-up, they shouldn’t have any adverse reactions. They might also question how they could experience trauma given what people on the screen in front of them have gone through.

The news cycle is unrelenting, social media abuse and trolls ever present. Female journalists are under unprecedented levels of online attack. The intent is to belittle, humiliate, shame, induce fear and ultimately discredit female reporters. Some journalists think twice before publishing due to abuse: The Columbia Journalism Review.

Then there is moral injury, the damage done to a person’s conscience or moral compass from something they did, failed to prevent or witnessed that deeply violated their moral and ethical values. Another form of moral injury is the betrayal of what’s right by someone who holds authority in a high-stakes situation. Moral injury was first reported in the media in this study of journalists who covered the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe.

MEDICINE

I rarely get shocked about mental suffering in the workplace, but that’s what happened doing this podcast in June 2022 with Dr Peter Baldwin, a burnout expert at the Black Dog Institute. Peter manages a Black Dog service that allows Australian health professionals to remain anonymous when seeking help for burnout or mental illnesses such as depression and PTSD. The service has been running for two years and been accessed by 10,000 workers. Of those doctors, nurses and other allied health workers who have completed mental health assessments -- 93 percent reported “really significant” burnout, Peter told me. They have nothing left to give, he said.

More than a quarter of junior doctors are working unsafe hours that double their risk of developing mental health problems and suicidal ideation, according to Australian-first research led by the Black Dog Institute and UNSW. The results, released in early 2020, revealed a link between long working hours and poorer mental health amongst doctors-in-training.

It's the same overseas.

Even before COVID, mental health issues were an occupational hazard for physicians, the New York Times reported. A systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2015 in The Journal of the American Medical Association found roughly 29 percent of resident physicians experienced depression or depressive symptoms. In a study published in August 2019, 16 percent of emergency physicians met the criteria for PTSD. The pandemic seems to have made things worse: A survey conducted in 2020 suggested as many as 36 percent of frontline physicians suffered PTSD, the NYT said. Doctors also have a high risk of death by suicide compared to many other professions. An estimated 300 to 400 physicians die by suicide in the United States every year — about a doctor a day.

In Australia, doctors are breaking their silence. A new wave of books detail the burnout, misogyny and mental illness in medicine. Guardian Australia (Sept 2022)

More industries to come.