Breaking the Silence: Construction workers are at high risk for suicide. What the industry is doing.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

From 2019:

Health Care

Breaking the Silence: Construction workers are at high risk for suicide. Here's what the industry is doing about it

The industry in Oregon and nationally is working to educate companies on the risk of suicide and to provide resources and support to construction workers in pain.

Johnathan Woolworth, founder of Seabee Construction, contemplated suicide a few years ago, but he didn't follow through with it. Now he wants to help other construction workers who are in pain.

By Elizabeth Hayes – Staff Reporter, Portland Business Journal
Apr 16, 2019, 2:22pm EDT

Editor's note: This story from the Portland Business Journal, a sister publication to SVBJ, is part of a statewide media reporting project in Oregon called Breaking the Silence, designed to highlight the public health crisis of death by suicide and examine how prevention can and does work. Scroll down for more information on the project, and visit the Breaking the Silence website to view all the stories.

A year after Johnathan Woolworth started a construction company with no experience in the field, he landed a big job — a $500,000 contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to replace a roof and install guardrails on a dam outside Eugene.

It was the summer of 2015. About two months into the work, he realized he had underbid by $100,000. Not only was he upside down on the contract, but he and his wife were buying a new house in Gresham, which further compounded the financial pressures he was feeling, the fear of not being able to provide for his family. He felt like he was a burden and “not good enough."

Each day, he looked down from scaffolding 96 feet above the water and contemplated slipping off a ladder or tripping and falling through the temporary handrail to his death. ... “I realized I could make it look like a workplace accident, and life insurance and workers comp would pay out to my wife,” Woolworth said. “It would be easy to go over the edge.”

Woolworth’s story could have ended there, but it didn’t. He pulled back, went public with his struggles and literally sent a message to the construction industry: It has a problem, one that extends from the high-level supervisor to the brand-new hire.

{snip}

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I do have to wonder why anyone with no experience in the field

would start a construction company, and how in the world he could actually get a big contract. Did the Army Corps of Engineers only look at his bid and not at his experience?