Another type of cancer

When my wife and I returned to Washington, D.C., for my third tour of duty as a congressional staffer, the house we purchased had a lot of “deferred maintenance.” We got to work rehabbing the interior and exterior, and the contractor leading the work basically became part of our family because we were living in the house during the months-long rehab.

So it was heartbreaking to receive an email from his son saying our friend had terminal cancer. He had previously beaten two former bouts of different cancers, but this one was untreatable.

With the other diagnoses, he was able to ring the bell, a celebratory moment for cancer patients who complete their treatment.

There would be no bell ringing this time.

Coincidentally, ringing a bell came up in a conversation that had nothing to do with cancer; a roofing contractor and I were discussing mental health, drug and alcohol addiction, and suicide in the roofing industry. The contractor pointed out there are celebrations and bell ringing for beating cancer but there is no such public celebration or excitement to acknowledge tackling or overcoming addiction or mental health struggles. These milestones are either private or shared with a small group of trusted friends and family. We’ve all likely seen social media posts for someone’s cancer being in remission or eliminated. When was the last time you saw a post about someone saying they no longer contemplated suicide?

In another conversation about mental health with a different roofing contractor, he, too, made the comparison to cancer and cancer treatment. The contractor pointed out if one of his family members had cancer, he would go to the ends of the Earth for the best treatment possible. But the public response is different with mental health.

Culturally, we often tell struggling people to “suck it up” or “deal with it” or avoid talking about mental health issues outright. Even in a welcoming environment, this attitude can make the person who is struggling feel as though there is no one to talk to because of fear of a negative response. As a result, far too often, we’re not even aware a person is struggling at all.

But there’s a cancer permeating through society. It doesn’t show up on a CAT scan or X-ray. It’s not as easily diagnosed or as straightforwardly treated with cycles of chemo and radiation, but it’s there and it’s pervasive. Deaths by suicide hit an all-time high in 2022, the most recent year of data, with more than 50,000 lives lost. And indications are the number continues to rise.

Sadly, data shows roofing and construction workers are more susceptible to suicide than the general population. Construction has the second-highest suicide rate of all industries; death by suicide happens within construction at twice the rate of the male population at large. (Men are 3½ times more likely to die by suicide than females. Roofing is a male-centric industry, so it makes sense to exclude females from the comparison.)

But mental health struggles can manifest in ways other than suicide. Construction workers also have substance use disorders occurring at twice the rate of the general population and are seven times more likely to die of an overdose than workers in any other occupation.

In fact, 12% of construction workers have an alcohol use disorder versus 7.5% nationally.

It doesn’t help that human attachment and interaction are in decline and loneliness is on the rise. Gallup reports 20% of respondents to a recent survey said they felt lonely for “a lot of the day yesterday.” This is distressing.

One in five people! Look around your office, and you hit that number pretty quickly.

“A lot of the day!” Not for a moment or in passing but a meaningful portion of an entire day.

Yesterday! Not in the past month or recently but yesterday.

The numbers are even higher for those younger than 35 years old: 22% of individuals under 35 years old report being lonely.

Gallup states: “The risk of mortality among people who lacked community and social ties was two times greater than that of people who had many social contacts. These differences were independent of physical health, socioeconomic status and health practices. Other studies have found similar relationships between strong social connections and longevity.”

During the past two NRCA board of directors meetings, members participated in substantive, compelling presentations about the mental health issues facing our industry and how those issues manifest themselves whether by alcoholism, absenteeism, drug abuse, suicide or other ways.

NRCA’s Health and Safety Committee officially added mental health to its areas of focus and deemed it an issue NRCA should focus on with the same intensity as more commonly discussed health and safety issues such as falls, soft-tissue injuries, auto accidents, torch safety and others.

This month is suicide awareness month. All NRCA contractor members will be receiving a kit with some baseline information and resources for their teams. Please consider ways to begin incorporating this topic into your training and conversations.

This is not going to be quick, easy or a straight line to success, and there are many aspects out of our control. But we owe it to our teams and ourselves to, at a minimum, engage, be informed, take steps to destigmatize this issue and be upfront about it. It is killing our friends and colleagues, and we owe them the opportunity to be able to ring a bell in their own ways as we work together to get them the care and help they need.

MCKAY DANIELS is NRCA’s CEO.
mdaniels@nrca.net