Mental Health Belongs in Your Construction Safety Protocol

Construction Executive outlines five approaches for incorporating mental health into existing construction safety programs. The article covers practical integration points, including toolbox talks, supervisor training, and employee assistance resources, and frames mental health as a formal safety concern rather than a peripheral wellness topic. It’s written for safety managers and field leadership at firms that already have baseline OSHA-compliant safety programs in place and want to extend them.

The construction suicide rate is approximately four times the rate for on-site fatalities. That number should be in every preconstruction safety planning meeting, and it almost never is. The firms treating mental health as a checkbox in an employee handbook are missing the actual risk, which lives in the field, not the binder. Subcontractor safety performance flows upstream. If your subs aren’t addressing this and you’re the GC of record, the incident still lands on your EMR. The AGC’s workforce development resources have expanded to include behavioral health guidance, and that’s worth passing along to your subs at the pre-job conference, not the close-out meeting.

Read the full story at Construction Executive.