Spring mental health | March 13, 2024

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After an early morning crane pick, I looked back at the last few months and thought I would be remiss to not share my journey and experiences when it comes to mental health and suicide prevention. Forewarning, some of this is rough.

Let’s get the bad out of the way and end with the good!

Last Friday, I got a notice of a worker who had taken his life the weekend before. Saturday morning, I received more bad news, that a worker from a different company had died by suicide Friday night.

Needless to say, it was not a great weekend. Just a reminder that we don’t know what others are going through, so we need to support them. At a minimum connect them to a resource within their company employee assistance program, call 988 or even call 911 if they have a plan to kill themselves.

I have also been dealing with some colleagues who were in crisis and did not know where to turn to, so they confided in me. Fortunately, I was able to help them through some tough conversations and follow up. If you find yourself in a position to help someone, please ask if following up with them is something they would like. It might be a no. But if it is a yes, do follow through. We want them to feel like there is still that connection.

This made me think. Do we as a company have a plan in place for mental health or suicide? So we had an internal talk and decided to have a class on mental and physical health with myself – (1) Wisconsin Construction Wellness Community: Overview | LinkedIn and Kat Musni – Kitty Hug Fitness in March. We then had a follow up call with our regional team to put together an emergency response mental health team and then get those employees trained to response to those situations. In April we are going
to solidify the team and talk about it at all team meetings, making it just a normal part of our business to break that stigma.

The key to all of this is to support our employees, our family, and our friends through whatever they may be going through. Creating connections like this can really benefit people who might be struggling.

And it is OK to not be OK.

Resources | Wisconsin Construction Wellness Community | Wisconsin (wisconsinwell.org)