"Confronting the Addiction and Mental Health Crisis in the Construction Industry"

The new episode of “On Your Radar” is now available! In this latest episode, titled “Confronting the Addiction and Mental Health Crisis in the Construction Industry,” we delve into the alarming statistics surrounding substance abuse and mental health struggles among construction workers. To shed light on these critical issues, our Rosecrance experts are joined by Bruce Morten and Lizzy Polheber, board members of the Wisconsin Construction Wellness Community.

You’ll Learn:

• Mental Health Challenges: The primary mental health challenges facing construction workers, including stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Workplace Demands: The demanding nature of construction work contributes to these mental health issues.
• Injuries and Drug Use: The connection between workplace injuries and subsequent drug use, highlighting the high rates of opioid use in the industry.
• Cultural Factors: The cultural factors within the construction industry that may contribute to higher rates of substance abuse and the stigma surrounding mental health.
• Support Systems: Insights on successful programs and initiatives that support construction workers dealing with addiction and mental health issues.

Transcript

Do you want to change your name here? 

Oh, yeah. 

I'm not Teddy Brown. I don't want to be, never wanted to be. 

How did that happen like that? I have to go back and change it. 

I don't think I can now, Tom. It's not going to read Teddy Brown. It'll just read Teddy Brown in these, but they know you're Tom Farley. This is Tom Farley. 

What the hell is that? These, they know it. 

Don't call him Teddy Brown. It's only his friends that call him Teddy Brown. 

Yeah, that's what I am. That's my stripper name.

 Welcome to another enlightening episode of  On Your Radar, a podcast for mind, body, and spirit brought to you by Rosecrance. I'm your host, Tom Farley. 

You know, we're going to talk about construction and the issues around that. And it's interesting, I kind of came into this, I read an article in the New York Times about the issues facing the construction industry, and I was struck by one particular quote that just said, workers in construction are more likely to die of overdose than those in any other line of work, and that kind of prompted me to seek out coalitions and construction companies and really kind of see if we can be of help. And also, it says that the mental health struggles in this industry are just as alarming with many workers dealing with high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression due to the demanding nature of their jobs. That kind of sprang into this episode of On Your Radar. In today's episode, we will explore the tough realities of substance use and mental health in construction and look for ways to build a healthier, safer future for everyone on the job. 

So I'd like to- it's my pleasure to introduce our guests for today. First, we have Bruce Morton from Marsh McLennan. He's also the president of the Wisconsin Construction Wellness Community. And with him is Lizzie Fullheber, who is with Mortensen Construction and is the secretary of WCWC, which is a group dedicated to promoting mental health resources for the construction industry.

Welcome, Bruce. Welcome, Lizzie. Thank you so much for being here. Also joining us today is Greg Tierney. Greg is the Vice President of Clinical Operations for Rosecrance. Also good to see you, Greg.

Okay, well, let's dive right in. Now, Lizzie, why don't I start with you? What are the primary mental health challenges facing individuals in the construction industry? 

Yeah, so when we talk about mental health and construction, I think the top three are, like you mentioned in the beginning, addiction, right? So they have a very high-stress job. So it would be addiction, anxiety, and stress, I would say, would be the three top mental health issues, craft workers and also office people tend to struggle with. We're in an industry that's very high pressure. We have to deal with clients, so we're trying to make them happy. We're trying to make our craft people also excited and happy and healthy to work, and there's just a lot of stress that comes with that. The timing of everything as well, right? Everybody wants a building faster, quicker, so all of the pressure that's put on all of us is... boils us down to those three things, which causes the addiction, anxiety, and depression. 

Well, Bruce kind of continued on that.  How did the demands of construction work specifically contribute to mental health issues? 

Yeah, I mean, we're male-dominated. We're in the age group where I'm in that 45 to 60, where we were all raised to not talk about it. I always ask my dad, the Marine vet, he's 76 years old, and how many times he asked me about my feelings. Well, that's zero. Right? 

Yeah, absolutely. 

That's what we grew up with, and to stuff it down. And the longer you stuff it down, the harder impact it can have. We talk about mental and physical health. You know, if you have a bad back for 20 years, you're not going to be real upbeat. You're going to be crabby. You're going to be in pain, and with construction, the mental health is the same thing. They just put it down until they can't, you know, 11 years for them to go get help, typically, in the construction industry. Um, and then you guys are going to touch on the opioid piece, I mean, right, we're in Wisconsin, what does everybody do? Drink. Well,  it's not on the jobs anymore, but, you know, it's, it's certainly around, and we know that, so that's another factor dealing with it.  Um, and we are seeing more and more, you know, drugs, opioid abuse, especially with the pain that they're going through. So what are a couple of the other ones that are or discussed highly?

Greg, if you want to jump in, you know, by all means, so at any time, I know there's just a lot you can, you know, kind of intersect here. I'm just trying to keep the, keep the,  kind of the flow going, but, you know. So, as Lizzie said, we talked about the, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's stress, there's pain. So, and, and, you know, workers are trying to, to deal with those things, you know, unfortunately, in some unsafe and unhealthy ways. What connection do you see specifically between work with all these things, the drug use and workplace injuries? Has that kind of made it…has it changed workplace industries?

I would say that, obviously, if anybody gets injured, it's common practice that they're required to get a test after, for not just our purposes, but insurance purposes and things like that that go along with it. And the past two years, I have noticed more and more non-negative drug tests after someone has been injured. And it's more toward marijuana, I would say, where people are trying to use that to be a stress reliever after work, is what they're saying, versus drinking or something else, which brings up, and I don't want to get too off on a tangent, but also now, what we're struggling with as general contractors is how some states are allowing marijuana to become legal,  and that puts us in a in a tough bind, right, because we don't want someone operating a piece of equipment high. Like, we can agree upon that, it's not great, um, but I would definitely say, and I think Bruce you, you see more contractors than I do on a day-to-day basis, but there's definitely been an uptick when someone gets hurt that it goes into kind of that non-negative area. But what goes along with that is a lot of these unions have programs, second choice programs, that these craft workers can go through so they don't get kicked out of the union. And what we've also been seeing is once they go through those second choice programs, there's more of an underrelated issue, too, of what's going on, on why they're using marijuana or other sorts of drugs. And so that kind of forces them, which I think that's great that the unions are doing that and they have that program available for them, but it kind of dives a little bit deeper on why are you choosing to do this and what's going on? And then the truth kind of comes out about the craft worker that way. And we've had a lot of successful craft workers go through that program and actually come back and then continue to use their EAP programs. But that's not always the case, but it has worked. 

Greg, can you compare this to you? You see a lot. You see this, you know, like work with, particularly in our Rsilience program, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. But you see a lot of different sectors, different types of workers, frontline. workers, veterans, things like that. How is what you're hearing in the construction industry compared to some of those? 

So the construction field shares a lot of similarities. They add some unique differences, but the populations that we are working with in our Resilience program are doing functions that serve others and serve the needs of the communities, which is exactly what the construction field does. And these positions tend to bring staff workers, tend to risk of harm themselves or witnessing harm to others, which can increase trauma and stress experienced on a daily basis. Also, increasing the risk of, well, what if this injury happens? Unfortunately, how a commonplace injury is on a workforce is probably... inevitable that you will see is and then it can be stuck in your mind of, well, what will happen if I am injured, and what will happen if I'm out of work? That type of stress is really wearing for construction workers, but also for first responders and other frontline workers. 

Interesting. So basically, what you're saying is there's cultural factors just baked into some of these industries that can, in and of themselves, contribute to a higher rate of drug use. And of course... the accompanying stigma surrounding those things, mental health and drug addiction, affecting a willingness to seek help. Is that what it is? 

Yeah, and I don't believe it's going on, willingness to seek help, but where our culture is sad, as Bruce said, it's more commonplace not to bring it up, and more commonplace to tough out the physical or mental injury or unwellness and plug through because that's what we're seeing other people doing. There's not a lot yet, and it's changing, thankfully, there's not a lot to counteract that stigma that we were all raised with and see that as embedded as we should be able to get through. However... When you're in a stressful position day in, day out, and you'll have all of other life issues of financial stresses and relationship stressors and childhood, you know, working with children, some of the numbers change greatly for risk factors during COVID. And a lot of that, we're finding out, was because we added another stressor on the parents. They had more role with their children at home. And so, just compounding stress rather than giving opportunity for relief and practicing wellness, which is so important when you're working, mandatory overtimes, when you're working through physical pain. 

You brought up COVID. I would like to point that out. So, we never stopped working during COVID. So, we were not, we were necessary. I know that's not the proper term, but we were considered a need to continue on, and so what compounded that as well is, all of the craft workers were showing up but going home also added more stress because they were around groups of people, and they had, some of them had wives at home that had cancer or they were going through other illnesses. But they were still forced, I don't say forced, they felt like they had to come to work because we were still functioning, right. Like, you can't build a building behind a Zoom camera and just show someone how to put a nail in, right. And we have to work together that is, I like to say, like, the best part about construction is it is a community, too, though, like, you're with people every day, they kind of become your family. But during COVID ,as you pointed out ,that was a very high stress time, and we were all figuring it out together as well. So one day we would have one process and the next day would be another, and I think us, um, as general contractors, um, pushing out kind of mental health, the same time as that, as COVID was going on, I think that they kind of took off together at the same time. And I thought that was very beneficial. 

Uh, you know, uh, that's, you know, that we saw that in, in, in healthcare too, when you're labeled that essential worker, um, it added a level of, uh, of, uh, a stress that wasn't there before, uh, educators, I think I certainly saw that as well. So, um, um, Yeah, we, you know, we need to, you know, that's why we're addressing these things now, because we're past that tipping point. We have to do that. Bruce, specifically, what, you know, let's go back to the opioid crisis that, you know, that was growing before we had the pandemic. How has that specifically impacted construction workers and their families?

 We've seen it with the prescriptions. It's just, you know. And if they can't get the prescriptions, they're taking their wives or someone else's, or getting it off the street. And, you know, we've seen the fentanyl take off. And then we started seeing it on the jobs, which is terrible. So that means someone's using it or they're dealing it on the jobs. And we had a couple instances where people didn't dispose of it properly. And that's scary, too, because of what can happen to them if they're not using the proper PPE. But now we have this kind of level of not knowing what's going on on our job. And you could have, you know, three, four, five hundred people on a job. And if someone's dealing, you never know how many people are under the influence at that time. And even if it's just a hand tool or a power tool like a drill, they could injure themselves. And then we think about our crane operators, our forklift operators, our excavators that, they make one wrong move, and it's not just one person. It could be tens, could be hundreds. So we've really had to take a closer look at, hey, what are the alternate ways to get rid of the pain? And I think one of the really good things that I know Lizzie is doing and I'm doing with a bunch of my contractors, just it's physical therapy. Partnering with these physical therapy companies to give our workers an outlet that isn't a drug. And I'll be the first to say it. I didn't use it till a few years ago, um, and it is a game changer. It's, I mean, just one, two sessions. It's part of their benefits or we pay for it internally, and imagine being able to get up and not be as sore or in pain as you were the day before. Um, again, a lot of these PTs will even come to the job, um, which is amazing. Like, take 15 minutes, get worked on, and then go back to work. I mean, that's the way to do it, um, and some other alternatives are just having those resources through our WCWC. We have all the QR codes for all the unions, and those are plastered in all the trailers. So they don't have to go looking for things anymore. They can just go find them, and they're at their fingertips. And I think that's been the key to what we've been able to do in construction. Are we there yet? No, because we just had a suicide within the excavating industry Sunday. I got a text, and this is a local company. And so we still got more to do, but at least there's free access to stuff versus when there wasn't before. I think people were leaning towards those drugs. 

It's interesting. I do a lot of travel. And then there was a day when, you know, managing stress, going through an airport, you saw, you know, the bars were packed to do that. Now you see physical therapists literally in the, you know, with chairs there. And I've utilized those all the time. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, do I need that? You know, going to wear. the people need it.So I love that you just said that right on the job side, having those and not just physical therapy, but just the mental side of things too. There's so much you can do right there. What are some of the common misconceptions about mental health and substance use in the construction industry? 

So, I think everybody thinks if you're in construction, you're like tough, right? Like how Bruce started this out, we have a lot of veterans, which is amazing, but, um, we have all different people from all over that are all kind of combined together. Um, and it sounds silly, but basically that people have feelings, too, right. Like, my office sometimes tends to be the therapist's office, but it's all about communication and just working things out when you really kind of boil things down to it. And there's a lot of times, once we kind of dig into an issue that's going on the job site, I would say nine out of 10 times, either that foreman or someone else has something else going on outside of work. And it bleeds into it. And we're working 10 hours a day. So if you're a construction worker, you're working 10 hours a day, and then you're getting home, and you have to eat dinner and go to bed, and you're going through a divorce or something like that, you're probably not going to bed right away and having the proper cycle of things. So, then they're coming to work. They're having emotions about that. They're not rested. They're normally not eating the best, exercising, all of that. And then it bleeds into... into what we do, but we're still held that every day you're here, you have a certain performance that you have to meet. We have production that you need to meet. And so that's where everything kind of starts to compound. That's why I would like to also point out that the shift that we're creating in giving our foreman and our superintendents trainings on how to handle those situations. A lot of our foreman and superintendents, and I know a lot of the others in the general industry in the like greater Milwaukee, Madison-ish area, we're all going through QPR training, it's called, where it's question, persuade, refer, where we know that we're not a therapist and we don't act like we are, but we at least now have toolkits on kind of what to say, what not to say, how to de-escalate a situation, when to get someone else involved, when to ask, like, would you like me to help you call someone with you right now? And just that little bit of training has gone beyond. It's actually funny. After we hold one of those training sessions, you get more people after the class coming up to you being like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. I wish I would have known this so many years ago. I didn't realize that sometimes my attitude affects thousands of, like, the other people on the site. Um, so, I think trainings have really helped. We've also kind of taken emergency response plans, right, like if we have a deck collapse or if there's a fire on the job site, we all have emergency response plans of what to call, who to call, what to do, what's next, and there's a plan written out. So now we've taken it to a crisis, a mental health crisis management plan, on what to do if you're having a mental health crisis on your project. I had to deal with it so far three or four times.  Luckily, all of them have turned out as a success. But having an actual plan in place, to me, was a lifesaver, right? Like, I don't think anybody is prepared to have someone come up to them and just flat out say, hey, I want to kill myself. And it does, it kind of, like, it checks you, right? It shakes you. But being able to bring them to a safe space and having a step-by-step plan to follow and making sure kind of like a checklist, I think all of that has been huge and has been helping out so many people and really making it easier to get that information out.

That's amazing. That sounds like a real industry shift that I don't think people are aware of. That's not the construction industry that's  in my mind, which is incredible. Greg, how can we in the behavioral health world, how can we partner and connect? How do we connect to support all these things that Lizzie just was talking about? What's our role? 

Well, first, I just really applaud that efforts, and that mirrors efforts throughout the country with programs like Mental Health First Aid. They really build on the idea that people care about each other and people around them, and they know the power of connection. It's just uncomfortable, as Lizzie said. It's awkward of, what do I say? We're going to make something worse. But with a little training and a little reassurance, we started to feel or understand that just being genuine with the person is the best thing we can do, and that gives you the confidence to be there with somebody. And that's a lot of times what they really need. 

Again, connection is so important for our well-being. And in a difficult time, just to be able to feel like, hey, someone understands where I am, allows the emotional intensity to decrease enough to get to a place where I can do something healthier with it rather than something that would be destructive. As far as what we could do more of, I can't agree more with combating the stigma of that mental illness, or even physical illness is a weakness. I've heard stories of men going to orthopedic surgeons and denying really any problems, but then they do scans, and they find what would help to levels of pain that nobody should be able to tolerate. And they're keeping it quiet. That kind of muscling through sets you up for that long-term stress that just wears you down mentally and keeps you from connecting with others. So, if we can help people understand the terms of wellness and take care of your physical health and mental health through everyday activities that are raised on things that are valuable to you, such as if family is valuable for you, then prioritizing time for that, or prioritizing things that are healthy for you. So, a lot of times we think, well, I'm going to get the sleep, so I'm going to take a night cap, or, as Lizzie said, have, I use some marijuana to relax. The problem with that is that long-term, that actually interferes with our sleep cycles and can actually have a long-term negative effect. Even though short-term we think it's working, long-term it's not. So building these skills where we have long-term health is just so important. 

That's fantastic. Bruce, is there any other successful programs or initiatives that your group has championed or would like to? Anything that is on the horizon that you think might be a game changer for the industry?

Yeah, Greg mentioned the Mental Health First Aid. We've hosted three classes. So we've trained 90 construction professionals. They didn't have to be, you know, superintendent or foreman, they could be safety, HR, project manager. So, I was just in Southeast Wisconsin over the last four or five months. We've brokered partnerships with people like NAMI, National Alliance for Mental Illness. We work with the local offices here , support their, their bingo night and their, their NAMI walks. Recently just did a, a grilling thing with the local  therapy company Gals on the Go Institute. So we went out and got in front of them and helped them out because they're helping the community with all their, their therapists on the mental health side. About six months ago, started a partnership with the AGC of Milwaukee, so Associated General Contractors of Milwaukee. So, like a partnership to get in their newsletter, to do talks with them, to have them share our website, hopefully down the road, the AGC of Madison. And then in October, I hope to speak in Denver for the AGC of America. So yeah, and we're doing things with the electrical associations, plumbers and sheet metals, carpenters, laborers, Wisconsin underground contractors. Who else, Lizzie? 

I think you hit them all. Probably. Yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, anybody that comes forward, I'll say whether it be union or non-union, because we do have the ABC Associated Builders contractors. They're the non-union sites. We're working with them as well for their conferences. Wellness Council of Wisconsin, we're working with them as well. Mental Health of America. Plymouth, we're working with them as well. I think that's it.

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. So beyond all these supports and collaborations, what can employers do to create a more supportive environment for mental health? And I ask that because I actually talked about this to your group about the recent Surgeon General's report. Last year, talking about the epidemic of loneliness, how one of the things he talked about was incorporating into policies and cultures this connectiveness, this, this feeling of, you know, how we used to talk back in the day that we needed a work-life balance, that you're this person at work and you go home and you're not that person. That doesn't work anymore. It's not, it's the whole person has to be embraced at the work because we're sending them home. Hopefully, that same complete whole person. What can the industry do to support that kind of notion of changing culture?

So, I can speak to what we've been doing. And I think a couple other generals do it as well. So first off, train your people, right? Like, so we do trainings as safety professionals on tools, on controlled access zones, confined space, anything, you name it. We put a lot of investing into training. So we do, we have added a lot of more training on mental health things, on how to, how to see the signs of different things. If someone's acting different, if they're having different, normally they come in to work five minutes early every day and they're in a good mood. Well, then you notice someone late all the time and is very angry and things like that. So trainings that just point out, kind of things that ignore. Like, if you just are in tune with each other you should be able to find out. the second step of that is we do stretch and flex in the morning, so we'll bring the whole job site together. Everybody stretches, you kind of go over the high risks of the day, what's going on. It's time we have music playing; it's time for all the guys and girls to get together and just really have that community. We also have taken it a little step further. We do a second stretch where it's not as big, but it's just another time to just circle up, get together, see what's going on. Are the tasks changing? Are things going, shifting left or what's going well? Can we finish out the day the same way as we planned? And then the other thing would be, I would say, is put in a mental health crisis plan. I think that would be a good start, and incorporating, doesn't have to be every toolbox talk. Every general contractor has to do a toolbox talk. So incorporating maybe one a month just on mental health and then incorporating the benefits of the EAP plans that our craft workers do have and giving them the information. I don't want to stereotype, but I am married and right. So the women mostly do all of the reading on their benefits and things like that. We kind of handle that stuff. So when you talk about construction workers, right, a lot of times they don't even know what they have. So just informing them on the things that that they're already paying for. They have so many free sessions of chiropractic care. They have free financial care. So if you're going through a hard time, and a lot of construction workers tend to get laid off in the winter, so there's financial planning that you can go to so you don't have to be so stressed when you, you can plan for being laid off for two months. They have writing of wills, just you name it. The unions really do have a lot of good stuff. It's just getting that information to the people. 

Well, what I loved what you said about the stretching, just to go back there, because anyone can stretch on their own and tell themselves it's, I'm trying to get, it's a physical thing, but to do it in a group and to do it in a connected way, it goes beyond the physical into, you know, the mental. I love that. That's what connectiveness, you know. brings. So, that's fantastic. 

Yeah.  So, Tom, let me add to that. It sounds like that's fantastic communication and focused on what support there is and what hope there is. We're going to bring people together for small opportunities. Also, some efforts we do, we do with good intention. We can see and be startled by numbers of how many people have died by suicide, and we can publish that rate in hopes that it would do some positive. Unfortunately, we also see that that can actually do some harm, and that it can normalize what we don't want to normalize. We want to normalize that people have these emotional experiences and can recover. 

Yes. 

Whereas hearing those numbers can start to sit in those, this is just normal for my population and this, and kind of concrete almost that idea as a way out, as opposed to the healthy ways, the seeking help. And so best to what we can do, we can be informed by those numbers and change our processes and communication, as Lizzie was saying, and be cautious of using numbers that could potentially backfire.

Yeah, and as I... I'll say it again, as I've said before, is we have talked about all of these things, whether it's substance use or mental illnesses, diseases of isolation, which we know. But what we're finding out now, or what we should know, is that we can't heal in isolation. It demands connection. And every time we can talk about that, it gets us out of that place of isolation and gets closer to a place of healing.

What's really powerful as well, and Bruce, I believe you'd agree with me, is when someone's bold enough at one of those stretches or in a group setting or a training where they find that vulnerability in themselves and they share a story, a personal story of how it's affected them, or how they succeeded in overcoming something. Those types of meetings and trainings have always been the most beneficial. And we see that you get more out of it. And a lot of people sit around and are like, wow, well, if he can do it, I can do it. It's not. So, the more people that share about it and just talk about it and realize that it's normal and real-life stuff does happen. Right. The more we just normalize it, I think the further we're going to be able to make some more success stories. 

The three V's, be visible, be vocal, and be vulnerable. If you do any one of those, any one of those three, you will get a positive reaction from someone. So it doesn't just have to be vulnerable. And just empathy for your fellow co-worker, no matter what industry you are in. Don’t push it away. Don't say you know what they're going through because you don't. And if they're coming forward, they're scared. And if we push them away, the chances of getting it back are very slim, especially our construction workers. For being all tough and module, when it comes to this subject, they are very shy. So when they do come forward, we have to support them in whatever way. If we can't do it, get them to someone else. Get them to the 988 number, the county number, there's so many resources that we have on the wisconsinwell.org website that you can just send them there. But I just say that if we could have more empathy in this world, the place would just be so much better. Like, it's a superpower to be able to sit with someone in their feelings and then listen good enough to get them to where they need to go, to give them a chance to get help. 

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I've been talking about for years. What we learned after 9-11 is that first responders are the heroes. They wear the cape, and we're learning more and more to be that first responder to the people around us, the people we care about, and even to ourselves. You know, to really understand and really identify somebody that's isolated or somebody that's struggling, even if that person is you, and do something about it. 

Lastly, Greg, what's Rosecrance doing specifically to address these challenges in this industry? 

Yeah, well, Bruce was really just set me up for that because our approach still emphasizes the idea of finding cohesion or finding connection with people who are similar, and that's why, that's really the whole impetus for the Rosecrance Resilience, to build and design a program that supports people who have similar values, their surrounding communities, their surrounding others, they have similar barriers, so too, in that they have uncritable work schedules or mandatory overtimes or, again, physical pain and stressors that are associated with work. That's what we want to offer this population an opportunity to come together and have a healing experience. The first step is talking to someone on the worksite, talking to a friend, and getting that referral to a treatment provider if that's what you will help you. And we would love to do that next step. We'll bring people together, learn the skills for... wellness and recovery, and build and manage these disorders that aren't manageable.

Mental health and substance use disorders are very difficult to work through, and they're very able to be worked through. People live happily in recovery. Our motto or saying for Rosecrance is Life is waiting. We are able to help support people and  get back to that happy life where they're able to live in their values as opposed to being stuck into a kind of behavior that's related to substance use or avoidance that might be related to depression or anxiety or child loss. 

Well, fantastic. You know, so Bruce and Lizzie, Allie, you've been in and around this industry for a while and you've been doing this specific effort for a little bit. Are you seeing a change? Have you seen the industry change because of all this work? Because the New York Times article was kind of like it opened eyes. But everything you've talked about actually kind of sounds like there's some stuff going on. And I know that what we're doing here at Rosecrance, we're seeing we're helping people, too. So, you know, is that the case? Have you seen it? Is it getting better because of all this work?

Yeah, I would say absolutely. Absolutely. Each company kind of has,  I want to say, like a champion, a mental health champion. Right. And when we all get together as a committee at WCWC, it's so funny. Just some of the stories we have a foreman, like running up to us and being like, Oh my gosh, it's empathetic today. You'd be so proud of me. I went and talked to this guy, and just like the look on their face, and I was like, " Good job.” Like, just like being a mom to everybody. But yes, I would say it's been night and day, and being able to understand. The biggest thing is that we're all just people, right, living in this world. No one's better than anyone. And that if we can just all get together and work and respect each other and, like Bruce said, show empathy, it's a great day for everybody, right, no matter what we're doing. If we're pouring a concrete wall or building a stud wall, it just makes it better.

Yeah. When you go to a site where the GCs or the subs are doing something with it, it's a different site. It has a different feel. The trailer has a different feel. It's just there. It's like when we were doing safety 25 years ago, right? We didn't wear hard hats and glasses. Well, now mental health has become almost common. We still have a way to go. But so many of the big GCs are doing it and touching so many lives. And they all have their unique spin in this area. But it's all for the same greater good. But I do know another thing we're doing, kind of lightly partnered with this company who makes these oak boxes, O period, A period, K period. They're overdose kits that we're going to start putting in our trailers. So if we did have something happen, we don't want it to. We don't want drugs on our site. But if we did, we're going to have those available and have the people train to be able to deliver that Narcan on these sites. It's a great cause. They're a nonprofit. You're going to be able to go to our website as well to be able to order them. We're going to put a link. But it's just another risk management tool because, you know, these people that may want to take their lives, I think they have more to live for and they just don't know how to get there. And if we can do that on our jobs or, geez, we don't care if they steal it and take it home and use it. That was our worry at first. We're going to get broken into. Well, we should save the life if we did. So that's the result, right? The other result is we didn't. 

Here's a little note. I've learned in work through our Resilience program, I worked with a lot of veterans, a lot of uniformed personnel, you know. In fact, a lot of people in the construction industry and obviously health care. We talk about this perception, oh, we can't be hurt or we can't. These are also people that want to talk about these things. These are caring, passionate people for the things they do. If there's any, these industries we just talked about, they are so wanting to go there, just eliminating a few of the barriers. I've seen floodgates open. It's like people have been waiting to talk about these things and caring about these things. I think industries, companies, health care, all of those supporting that, these workers, I've seen the change.

And I know you have too, and it's been fantastic. This has been an amazing conversation. I truly appreciate you. We’ve been waiting to get you on forever, but I just love that we're having the conversation because I love changing industries. There's some great, great stories that we talked about today, so thank you all for being here. And once again, I want to say this has been On Your Radar, a podcast series produced by Rosecrance with locations in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. You can make a difference in your own life and the lives of others who are struggling and don't know where to turn. Help is just a click away. Visit rosecrance.org or call 888-928-5278 for more guidance and information. 

Rosecrance, life's waiting. 

Thank you so much, everyone. That was excellent.