Your construction clients may promote safety on the worksite, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic creating a need for enhanced safety protocols. But are they doing enough to raise awareness about mental health and suicide prevention?

If not, September is just the time to start. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and the resources needed to get started will be easier to find than ever.

NASBP is a stakeholder in the Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention (CIASP), which offers these resources for construction companies, whether they are just starting to raise awareness or are working on implementing a prevention program.

To help your construction clients put a suicide prevention program in place, you can share CIASP’s Integration Resources page with them. It offers resources to begin a program, ways to promote suicide prevention, as well as resources for intervention, postvention, and resources specific to veterans.

If all this information is a bit overwhelming, CIASP suggests two beginning documents to kick off your client’s efforts. One is the Needs Analysis & Integration Checklist, which will guide the conversation and help understand where they are as a company in regards to mental health. The integration checklist gives them an opportunity to breakdown the overall plan into manageable tasks and assigns responsibilities to different members of their team.

Another suggestion from CIASP is the document Three Levels of Integrating Suicide Prevention in Your Company, which offers actionable steps to take as a company grows its suicide prevention program. Level 1 includes basic steps, like reading articles and watching webinars. Level 2 deepens the conversation—employee trainings, Toolbox Talks, and normalizing mental health and suicide prevention by using posters, stickers, key tags, and more. Level 3 keeps these practices going and puts a formal crisis response plan into place.

As always, we hope you and your contractor clients will take the pledge to STAND up for suicide prevention. Together we can all help make mental health awareness and suicide prevention just as important as worksite safety.