‘Like drawing blood from a stone’ – construction’s mental health struggle

It began to rain, and Rob Muldoon blamed himself for it. “I was beating myself up,” the Manchester-based bricklayer recalls.

Looking at the rain coming down, he thought to himself: “I’m failing here.”

As he tried to begin work on site, it felt like the weather stole his day’s work away. Self-employed at the time, he would be paid for the number of bricks he laid per day and, as he couldn’t lay any in the downpour, he would not get paid. He recalls how things completely beyond his control caused his mind to spin “like a merry-go-round”.

“You just put huge pressure on yourself to try and get the job done any way possible,” Muldoon says.

He talks about other days when he ploughed through work, despite his mental health struggles. “It’s miserable,” he says. “You’ve just got to switch yourself off. And all you’re thinking is ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this’. And then when you do get to the end of the day, and you’re sat in the van or the car, or on the train or tube or whatever to get home, you’re in absolute pieces, and you’ve got to get home, get yourself sorted. And then try and do it all again tomorrow. And do it again the day after, and so on and so forth. And it’s miserable, absolutely miserable.”

Seven years on from that rainy day, Manchester-based bricklayer Muldoon works for McCrory Holdings. He is now a mental health first-aider, a role that means he watches out for early signs of mental battles among colleagues.

Muldoon’s experience is all too common, given that the statistics are clear and are not improving. The number of workers in construction who take their own life has remained stubbornly high. Construction workers are bombarded daily with pressure, caused by both work and non-work factors. In September 2021, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published data for the preceding year of 2020, which shows that for every 100,000 construction workers, 30 died by suicide.

An analysis of recently published ONS data carried out by Glasgow Caledonian University professor Billy Hare finds that construction workers are 3.4 times more likely to take their own life than workers in other kinds of job.

Hare’s startling findings show that while the suicide rate in other occupations was relatively static between 2015 and 2020, the picture is different for builders.

“The construction figure has gone up five percentage points in the past five years, from around about 25 per 100,000, rising steadily to just under 30 per 100,000,” he says.

Hare has called for more research to be carried out to factor issues such as age into the statistics, but does not expect the missing data to alter the numerical reality: proportionally more construction workers kill themselves than any other workers. And the tally is getting worse.

What are the daily pressures on workers driving this dreadful trend and what do they look like, on and off site? Most importantly, could the culture in the built environment be changed to end this problem?

Construction News has spoken to some of those who have experienced mental health difficulties in the past to discuss the issues they have faced and how they have recovered, as well as people who have worked with them. We hope that this will help others who are struggling with their own issues.

Warning signs

Seven years on from that rainy day, Manchester-based bricklayer Muldoon works for McCrory Holdings. He is now a mental health first-aider, a role that means he watches out for early signs of mental battles among colleagues.

“A lot of the time, they don’t turn up to work or they’re not performing properly. Their standard of work slips and they’re not looking after themselves,” he says. “We don’t have to turn up every single day, shirt, tie, looking smart. But you do get to see people that aren’t getting a haircut and aren’t looking after themselves. They’re not eating properly, and when they are eating it’s usually crap a lot of the time.”

Marc Preston is a former quantity surveyor, who is now a therapist and runs New Foundation Counselling in London. His company provides specialist counselling for people working in the built environment.

Preston says that some warning signs come in the form of a shift in personality. A colleague may become very quiet, withdrawn or disengaged. They might be caught crying, seen drinking at lunchtime or laughing for no reason.

Preston illustrates further: “They may say things like they can’t wait to get drunk or can’t wait to get home and take some drugs.”

He also says that those who have been given a tight deadline for work are very likely to feel a lot of pressure. This could particularly be the case for those in finishing trades or those low down in the supply chain.

Many workers are paid by the amount of work produced, based on their trade. This could be a price per bricks laid for a bricklayer or work per square metre for a plasterer. It is a system of pressurised extremes – lots of money when there is a lot of work done, and no money when there is no work.

Ashley Francis works as a manager for Essex-based Swift Brickwork. He says: “All jobs have pressures. Bricklaying is renowned for pace: it’s trying to put numbers in, as quick as possible, in the best quality. It comes back to money.

“If you’re on price, if you’re not hitting their numbers, you don’t get paid. If it starts raining, you’re not getting paid.

“It’s always going to come back around to family issues, home issues, but I think it’s the pressures of the job that can go back home. And then from home it adds anxieties, depressions, stress, and results in people taking their life.”

Soldiering on

Muldoon says that he first felt the weight of mental health struggles when he saw dramatic changes at work and at home.

“I’ve been with my now wife a long time. We got married in 2015, children came along [and] we moved house in 2016. Things were changing at work,” he says. “My role was changing. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I worried that if I told anyone, they would think, ‘if he can’t deal with his feelings, how will he do his job?’”

Ashley Mahoney, who owns Birmingham-based Mahoney Brickworks, recalls a job where he once made many mistakes.

The night before, he says, he was driving home when he spotted a man on a bridge, on the verge of taking his own life. Mahoney says he rushed to reach the man but he fell to his death while Mahoney was a metre away.

The bricklayer felt miserable about not being able to save the stranger, something that added to his own depression.

“I was already quite low and then witnessing that, it mentally blew my head because I witnessed what the final outcome could be to be depressed, basically,” he says.

On reflection, Mahoney thinks he should have taken time off to deal with the shock. But he had been afraid to let the customer down. Soldiering on was not helpful, though, because a week later he had to go back to the job to fix the work he had tried to do when he had not been fully capable.

“All jobs have pressures. Bricklaying is renowned for pace: it’s trying to put numbers in, as quick as possible, in the best quality. It comes back to money.”

Therapist Preston points out that the construction environment is only one trigger. There are always more layers to carefully peel back when people are struggling: “Someone might be having relationship difficulties at home. And then when they go to work, it’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. But underneath it, there are usually other issues.

“It can be very circular, so you can take your work home and then that causes problems, or you can have your home problems and then bring it to work.”

Drugs and alcohol, alongside painkillers such as codeine, are common coping mechanisms. Some turn to them to help ease the physical aftermath of arduous labour, as well as numbing the mind when life is too much to bear.

Several individuals interviewed by CN said that they had seen colleagues on a slippery slope, where one beer turns into 10, or two painkillers a day becomes four or more.

Preston says he has observed compulsive addictions to gambling apps and pornography among construction workers as well.

“It can be quite addictive because it potentially fills an emotional void,” he explains.

The culture on a site can be its strength and its weakness. Professor Hare, a construction management and safety researcher, says the banter on construction sites is like a relief mechanism, with humour long having been a means for workers to blow off steam.

But this ‘banter’ that builds camaraderie can also create a culture of toxic masculinity. It may constrict conversations to football, the weather, what’s happening on site and what the next job is going to be. It makes it hard to, as Preston suggests, peel back the layers, when the natural conversations on site seldom stray anywhere near the kind of personal problems that leave people struggling.

Trying to talk

Swift Brickwork’s Francis says when he started out 10 years ago, it was very hard to cut through the banter. “If I said that I was worried about something, I would probably just get laughed at,” he says.

Like Rob Muldoon, Francis is also now a mental health first-aider on site. He sits at his desk, inside a typical site office. On the wall, he has neatly pasted posters about mental health in construction, showing statistics, helplines and warning signs.

“Trying to talk to guys and ask them what their issue really is, is like trying to draw blood from a stone,” he says.

Mental health first-aider Ashley Francis

He hopes for a construction industry where mental health is embedded into the system, with a chain of help running across different companies and sites. “If there were more first-aiders and it was more socially acceptable to talk about it, then really, the next [construction] job to me is only 10 minutes away, and then next to them it’s 10 minutes away,” Francis says. “That means there’s always someone within 10 minutes to actually talk to, face to face.”

Muldoon, speaking to CN over Zoom from Manchester, wears a black T-shirt that merges into his black background – an image that is overlaid with mental health helplines in a bright yellow font.

He tells the story of a middle-aged bricklayer whose wife had left him and whose children had grown up. He was living far from family and drinking too much.

The bricklayer, consumed by a sense of loss, made plans to take his own life. Muldoon says he did his best to talk to him but realised he needed to call 999. Help reached him at the very last minute.

“He got the help he needed. He’s turning his life around. He still has his dark days, and he admits he has his dark days, but his thoughts aren’t suicidal anymore because he knows that there are people out there and there is support out there,” says Muldoon. By way of emphasis, he points to the yellow lettering behind him, spelling out the names of charities and their helpline numbers.

As for himself, he says that he was on a “self-destruction mission” before he got the help he needed for his work, his mental health and his marriage. “We’re in a stronger place now,” he says.

He now hosts a mental health podcast called The Mind Your Head Podcast, where he interviews construction workers about their journeys with mental health. He says he wants others to hear their stories and know that life can be good, even with treatment or medication.

“My biggest message is to get people talking. And a podcast is all about talking as well,” he says.

Muldoon also looks at the rain in a different way now. “Because I understand how to express what I’m feeling, I turn around and say [to myself], I can’t do anything about it. I’ve not made it rain,” he says. “Everything that is within my control is ready. We’re good to go. But it’s raining, I can’t do anything about it. Don’t put that pressure on yourself.”