Men in ‘macho’ jobs are killing themselves – our silence is deadly

Date: Monday 14 Mar 2022

By Dr Mark McBride-Wright, MD of Equal Engineers

I’ve had people breakdown in front of me, hyperventilate and tell me they can’t face another day.

I know people who have actually died by suicide because of the pressures of their work environment.

These are people who are employed in what you might call ‘macho-industries’ like construction and engineering.

I don’t say this lightly: what I have witnessed in this area has truly shocked me. It’s why – as an engineer – I’m trying to do something about it.

In these type of careers, we work on physical safety to the point of ridicule.

An oil company would drill into you about holding the handrail while walking up the stairs to minimise the risk of slips, trips and falls.

You could walk into an office without a lid on your coffee and that could lead to disciplinary action, because it goes against the code of conduct – if you trip, you might burn someone. That is the level to which engineering and construction businesses would observe physical safety behaviours in the workplace.

The complete irony is there’s often absolutely nothing in place to ensure the safety of mind and presence.

I’ve seen male engineers, who were abused as children or grew up in families with alcoholism, display unhealthy coping mechanisms like addictions of their own. When they spend a long time working away from home, it exacerbates everything. They can become depressed and crippled by anxiety.

Individuals are under untold pressure, and with small margins, it takes its toll. If you then enter an environment where nobody talks about what’s going on in their life, there’s little wonder this problem keeps getting worse. Many men just don’t feel like they can talk about the stresses of life.

During my PhD in chemical engineering, I became friends with a woman who subsequently had several children. We kept in touch, I became a father myself and realised how important a nuclear family unit was before her husband – a labourer working in construction – died by suicide.

It was another traumatic incident, a horrendous yet avoidable statistic that devastated a family.

I’ve repeatedly witnessed a hyper-masculine culture that mocked vulnerability and opening up

It’s upsetting and unnecessary; people can get to this frame of mind without anyone being there to help. In the ‘macho’ industries I refer to, mental health issues are especially endemic in men.

According to NHS England, suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 and the ONS reported in 2017 that male construction workers are almost four times more likely to take their own life than those working in any other industry or profession.

If we were more caring, connected and empathetic, as well as encouraged to talk more by employers and normalise it in general society – we could save lives.

If companies had a culture of care and respect, where psychological safety is at the heart of what they do, then I think we could bring down the ridiculously high rates of male suicide and get people much-needed help.

Working as a technical health and safety engineer, I’ve repeatedly witnessed a hyper-masculine culture that mocked vulnerability and opening up.

I’ve worked on a construction site where this dominant ‘bang your chest’ attitude began to develop and there was one lunchtime in the canteen where a young lad was being repeatedly picked on.

I watched as a member of the group turned around to the main antagonist and told him in no uncertain terms to stop. He explained that his brother was so badly bullied at school he died by suicide. That one man standing up for what was right really did start to change the culture.

I’m trying to turn things around when it comes to mental health with my company EqualEngineers – an enterprise that connects inclusive employers talent in engineering and technology.

My mission is to create inclusive engineering and technology organisations by increasing the diversity of the workforce and opening conversations to improve stakeholder health and wellbeing.

Before I set it up, I helped organisations create physically safe places to work through evacuation escape planning or ensuring that assets (like equipment or buildings) people worked on were designed to minimise any likelihood of fatality during serious incidents.

Anything that could lead to fatalities, engineers think about ways to preserve life and minimise harm. It struck me that we weren’t doing enough to prevent death from the silent killer of mental ill-health.

In 2018, we launched groundbreaking research investigating Masculinity in Engineering. We uncovered nearly one in five engineers (18%) reported losing a colleague to suicide, while around the same amount (22.5%) said they had self-harmed or considered ending their life. Astonishingly, over one in 10 said men should view women as property and express themselves through aggression.

This research was shocking because it made me realise how common suicide seemed to be – whether that be ideation or completed – and how many lives that had already been lost. I wondered whether we’d ever be able to break the cycle.

We relaunched this survey late last year because we need hope that we can change the culture in this sector and are currently collating the results.

Sadly, though not entirely surprising after the pandemic, early findings suggest that the number of people working in engineering who reported thoughts of self-harm or suicidal ideation increased to one in four. That is a reason this work is so important.

Our drive is to create parity of esteem between mental health and physical safety in engineering.

Creating a culture where people can be themselves and open up about anything in their life – whether that’s coming out at work or financial planning issues, gambling, addiction or loneliness – will have a huge knock-on benefit. Mandatory mental and physical first aid training, meanwhile, should be prioritised.

That’s my vision for change and it needs to happen.

It’s all about doing more to address the brutally high suicide rates prevalent across typically macho industries.

EqualEngineers holds a special Engineering Talent Awards to recognise good practise and achievements from individuals and organisations working to improve the sector.

Content source:  https://metro.co.uk/2022/03/04/men-in-macho-jobs-are-killing-themselves-our-silence-is-deadly-16175002/