The Michigan Department of Transportation has been putting a new focus on the mental health of its staff as suicides among construction workers have been rising.
Speaking on the latest episode of the MDOT podcast, Talking Michigan Transportation, agency chief engineer Gregg Brunner said in Michigan, a construction worker is now 12 times more likely to die by suicide than due an on-the-job injury.
“When you start looking at stats overall in the construction industry, that has the second highest rate of suicide out of any industry in the U.S. behind mining,” Brunner said. “And when you start thinking about it, construction is a high stress job, everything is low bid, so there’s tight timeframes, tight schedules, you’re away from your family a lot.”
Brunner started to notice the toll stress can take on MDOT employees when he had a role helping first responders prepare for crash response. Then he started to learn about the suicide rate among construction workers.
“When you look in the U.S., there’s almost 50,000 suicides a year overall. And in 2022, 5,000 of those were from construction folks. 2023, 7,000. So that number is increasing.”
Brunner said the stress of the job is a problem, but so is the tendency of men to bottle up feelings of distress.
Brunner said MDOT recently convened a mental health resource group and he was surprised by the high turnout to its first meeting. Some attendees said they wished something like it existed sooner, back when someone they knew took their own life.
A panel convened by the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials focused on construction worker mental health just last month.
