Business Innovators Radio - Episode 31: Construction Working Minds Summit with Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Construction Executives Live Please join Jeremy as he interviews award winning mental health advocate Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas as she discusses the 3rd Annual Construction Working Minds Summit taking place at the end of February. The construction industry is taking suicide prevention action to combat this ever-present problem and the time is now for all of us to take that step forward!In The Zonehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/in-the-zone/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-31-construction-working-minds-summit-with-dr-sally-spencer-thomas

Welcome to In The Zone and Construction Executives Live, brought to you by U.S. Construction Zone, bringing you strategies for success with construction innovators and change makers, including In The Zone peer-nominated national award winners. Here's your host, Jeremy Owens, welcome back to Construction Executives Live. I am your host, Jeremy Owens, owner and founder of U.S. Construction Zone and three generations improvements out in Northern California. Hey, happy New Year to everybody. Thanks for being. being here a little impromptu construction executives live this time. I have a great friend who needed some help and I was all about it. So thanks again for being here. I know a lot of you have had had some weather events, going to have some weather events. We're going to have rain. So be praying from Northern California. We don't handle that too well. Thoughts and prayers, please, for us. Hey, we are sponsored again by the great team at Build 12. Check them out. Build12.com. automate your revenue generating machine. They are great people, and I've had the fortune of getting to know them as people and as business owners,

and they've really helped me personally. So I've been using their program for the last couple months. Give them a look. Build12.com. They'll really help you out, especially if you're a remodeler, smaller construction company. It'll really help you up a lot. Hey, the other thing I wanted to talk about today is we've always made an effort at U.S. Construction Zone to focus a lot on mental health.

And I have my own personal story with that. I lost my brother-in-law a week before the COVID shutdown to suicide. It rocked my world. It rocked my family's world. And ever since that moment, I decided to make mental health a huge part of U.S. Construction Zone. And, hey, in the last couple of years, I've learned a lot. I've learned that we have a big problem, and I didn't know that before.

And I'm third generation in construction. I never heard about it once until about two years ago, and that really changed. So we really have talked a lot about it on our live shows, our podcasts, our content, but I'm really excited about 2024 because this is the year for action. And this is the year we get into it. So I'm excited because I have one way you can get involved right now. and it is the construction working mine summit. That's what we're going to be talking a lot about today.

And I get the opportunity to interview my friend for the second time. And she's our first second time guest. So she should feel very fortunate. She's going to get a ribbon that I'm going to mail her in the mail. And she's going to talk about this third annual construction working mine summit. That's taking place at the end of February. So we're going to get right into that. And what I'd like to do now is introduce

Sally Spencer Thomas, and she is a clinical psychologist, inspirational, international speaker, and an impact entrepreneur. Dr. Spencer Thomas is known nationally and internationally as an innovator in social change. She's been invited and spoke at the White House. She's been invited and spoke at TEDx, and she has started and helped multiple large-scale gap-filling efforts in mental health, including the award-winning campaign man therapy and the nation's first initiative for suicide prevention in the workplace working minds. Please help me introduce Sally Spencer Thomas. Sally, thank you for being here.

Hey, Jeremy. Thank you so much for inviting me back. And while I'm very sad about the reason that we are connected in this space, I'm so grateful for you helping amplify the message around suicide prevention with your listeners. Thank you so much. It seems like the least I could do, right? I mean, I can talk. But I appreciate you being here again.

And tell us, for those of us that don't know you, tell us a little bit how you got started in this space. I mean, it's not like we're always like, hey, I'm born to do this. What was your story? Yeah, I always say nobody shows up for the space because of the money or the fame. We come because we care. We come because we've been impacted in a profound way. And for me, like you, I lost a loved one. I lost my younger brother, my only sibling Carson,

to suicide in 2004 after I'd been in the field of mental health for about 16 years. So I was no stranger to mental health. And I learned a lot after his death, even though I had, you know, degrees in clinical psychology, my doctorate, a whole bunch of experiences, all kinds of things. I learned a lot after his death that I didn't know before. And because the loss was so profound, it just became a calling for me, as it does for many, to try to figure out bold gap-filling things to prevent what happened to Carson from happening to other people. And what I learned was that the majority of people who die by suicide are working-aged men. Most of them die in first attempt.

Most of them never step foot in any type of mental health resource. So where do we impact? Where do we make a difference? It's the workplace. And here we are many, many years later. And now I feel like the things are coming together, the things are coming into place where we can really start to move the needle. And that brings me a lot of inspiration. Yeah.

No, I was just thinking that too. It's just, you know, where we've come, I mean, I met you maybe almost two years ago now where it's like where we were even then where you're at now. Tell us a little bit about that jump in the last couple of years because I think when we first met, you told me about it and I was like, no. You know, so I was in that space two years ago. Now, where are you at now? Yeah, I mean, kind of like your experience is the norm. People don't know that there's a problem to solve because, you know, historically the data had been shared. it was on a people's radar.

People are always chalking the deaths or the near misses to one-offs. But then when we looked at the data, all of these stories started to come forward. So the first step was really just to bring awareness to this, that we have a problem. There's a problem here. And now we're just starting to have that same level of conversation with an even exponentially bigger problem, which is around addiction and overdose. So it's not just suicide. It's all of the catastrophic things that can come from mental health that is not being helped well.

And so we moved from awareness out of awareness pretty quickly because awareness only gets you so far. We definitely, as you said, we need action and we need strategy. So again, it can't be a one-off training or a one-off conversation with an individual. We really did think about cultural change. Right. Yeah. And we talked a lot before about stigma. And, you know, obviously that's part of the awareness part.

But, you know, stigma probably lasts a little bit longer for a bunch of boneheaded construction fellows. you know, that there is more of a stigma, right? There's more of a, you know, I guess a lack of vulnerability as people and as an industry. So that probably took a little bit longer, right, than most industries. You know, I never chalk things up to people behaving badly. There's a lot of good reason for a tough-minded culture to succeed in construction. You attract people that are willing to take more risks that have that stoicism for a reason. The work is hard, really, really hard.

I always say the toughness is a superpower. You have to have it to succeed and thrive in this business, but it's also every superpower has its underbelly, and this is the underbelly. It's largely a group of people that are least likely to reach out for help proactively because of that value of self-reliance and problem-solving and decisiveness and toughness, whether it's men or women, it doesn't matter. A lot of tough people out here.

So the beauty of the construction industry is that there's also a lot of strength, in teamwork and helping one another out and looking out for one another's backs. And so that's what we're really building upon that, that strength of the industry. Okay. And has there been any positive trends? I know that we've been kind of stuck in a lot of spaces. And I know that the addiction doesn't help for that. But it seemed like for a couple years there were stuck. I know the rankings are rankings, but we're somewhere usually around second out of all industries in terms of suicides. Is there any movement there? Are any positive things you're seeing?

Not yet. If you think about, you know, how many action steps and policies and innovations in safety equipment and safety gear and PPE, you know, how long that took to turn the safety culture around it, you know, it's almost a generation or at least a decade. You know, you get a couple of early adopters, making change scoos quickly in the beginning. But you've got literally hundreds of years of we always did it this way, that we have. to undo. So I say it's turning the Titanic around and it's going to take all of us doing a lot of different action steps. So unfortunately, no, the data are very discouraging and largely, I think, fueled by COVID since the last time we captured the data. So the last time we had national data out, it was actually 2016 data and only from a certain subset of states. We just now in 2023,

in December of 2023, had another report come from the CDC. It's based on 2020. 21 data and it's 49 states. So it's a much better sample and more recent time period. But of course, in the midst of a lot of disruption that was happening around COVID when we already know that the overdose rates went through the roof. So unfortunately, no. Construction as a whole went from 45 per 100,000 to 56 per 100,000. And within that, we had huge jumps with the iron workers, with the roofers. The iron workers are now at 86 per 100,000, just astronomical. rates. The roofers are at 80 per 100,000, but even supervisors are at a high level, 61 per 100,000. And laborers are at 91 per 100,000. So things are not moving in the right direction yet.

We got some data also from CPWR, that the overdose numbers continue to jump. And of course, there are lots of things happening in the world and in the environment that are fueling these problems and so a small group of very dedicated people it's hard to make a difference but we just need to double down on our efforts so that's that's what we're doing yeah and and with that effort comes construction working mind summit um this is your third year so tell me how it started and and what the difference is between year one and year three now yeah so i always have to smile when i say how it started because um we were training some trainers there's a training call the vital cog in construction. It's a very brief suicide-specific training where you can take a lunch break

and at least get people some very basic skills on how to start a conversation and be a warm bridge to resources. And so we were getting this training off the ground and I reached out to Cal Buyer. And if anybody knows Cal Buyer, he's like Energizer Bunny connector of all things in construction and everybody loves Cal. And so I said to Cal, hey, Cal, wouldn't it be great if we got a bunch of these trainers together and started to develop a community and recognized and reward their commitment, which I thought would have been like a group of 50 people, maybe a round table, that kind of thing. And all of a sudden, we've 10xed that idea,

and we're hosting a national conference, actually ended up being international because we had some people from Canada come down with like a full thing, like keynotes and breakouts and all kinds of stuff. And that was year one and that was in Denver. And we were so enthused by the response from the community people just showed up ready, ready to contribute.

So we said, okay, well, that was a win. Let's do it again. And so in Kansas City last year, we doubled the number of people. We went from 200 to 400 and we increased the complexity. One day to a day and a half, added some pre-conferences and that form. So, you know, we are trying to double it again. I mean, I don't know that we'll get double the attendance. We're probably going to be somewhere between 400 and 500, but we've now moved it to four days.

So we have two days of pre-conference, two full days of breakouts and, workshops and keynotes and discussions. We have a gala. We have an award ceremony. We have a toolbox talk competition because there's a lot that needs to be shared and a lot that needs to be done. And we're very, very excited that this is the go-to gathering of all the people that really care about suicide prevention, mental health promotion, addiction, recovery, and overdose prevention in the construction industry. Yeah. So who is that? Who is, it for and I did put a link in the LinkedIn live show and I'll add again here to to the chat so everyone has it but so when do we need to register by when is it and you know who's who's invited yeah so who's

invited everybody who cares about this issue and one of the beauties for me is that we've got people coming to this that can't talk to each other they can't speak to each other there's so much divisiveness in whether they're competitors or whether they're, you know, just have different viewpoints on labor, whatever it is. They can't talk to each other outside. But they come here and they stand in solidarity because they know that this issue is beyond their differences. It's beyond that.

It is a bigger issue to solve and we're going to solve it better if we're all in it together. Right. So we have large contractors, small contractors. We've got mid-sized organizations. We've got professional associations coming in with their chapter membership. We've all kinds of labor. representation. We've got all kinds of researchers. We've got mental health professionals and

mental health advocates who are trying to learn more about the construction industry. We've got a lot of people with lived experience, people who've come through their own experiences with suicide, overdose, and addiction, who are trying to share their wisdom and there are some of their ideas of what helps them. Because it's not always the same thing as what the clinicians think. A lot of times it's something different and something that we can take action on that doesn't require a whole mental Hall system. So we've got a lot of people, OSHA, OSHA's coming, like all kinds of people that are weighing in on this from different perspectives. And again, that makes me incredibly happy. In terms of when to register and how to register. So early registration deadline has passed for the regular

ticketing. We had an early birth discount, but we still have a chance to get in before you hit that, what we call the procrastinator's penalty. So between now and the 9th of February, you can register after that, you'll be hit with a pretty significant penalty. So get your registration. And if you're at all interested, we're also still taking sponsorships. And this is such a win for so many organizations. They can get a whole bunch of tickets to come. We also have now included in the ticket price, a ticket to the gala for everybody who's coming in as a sponsored seat.

That's going to be a ton of fun. Sponsored by Milwaukee Tool. We're going to have an emcee and music and raffles. provided by Milwaukee Tool and at our awards ceremony. Another deadline to think about is our scholarship deadline. So because the sponsors have been so generous, we actually have some money for scholarships, for students and apprentices,

because we want to start early in this conversation. We want to start early and then thinking about how to uphold their own mental health and how to help their teams and their organizations. So if you have some students and apprentices that want to come, we can we can have them apply and then hopefully support their registration and even their travel. And then finally we have the pre-conference registration deadline, which is coming up, well, early bird, and then the price increase on the 26th of January.

And we have all kinds of certificate bearing workshops. So the vital cog training that I was mentioned earlier, you can become a trainer. So it's a train the trainer certificate workshop. We have things for peer. allies. We have things for psychological first aid and recovery first aid and a whole bunch of things around addiction. It's going to be a great, very skill focused, strategy focused, and awareness focused experience for people. Okay. Tell me a little bit more about that trainer thing, because that was a question that I had personally, and I did put the Event Bright link in there

so that people can just get a look. So tell me a little bit more about that. the trainer aspect, who should be looking at that? You know, because I think there's a lot of people who are trying to figure out how to get involved in, hey, one way is be a sponsor. If you can't make it, there's one way. So here's an action step for you. If you can make it, then make it. But what other ways are you kind of pushing people to get involved? So the first day of pre-conference is actually a storytelling retreat. So we have a lot of people with lived experience who want to share their story as, you know, a hopeful model. Like, I got through this. Like, I lived through this addiction. I lived through a really dark time. And here's how I was helped. It may not necessarily work for you,

but here how I was helped. And so I'm living proof that recovery is possible. And all storytelling also helps people know that they're not alone. You know, they might think they're the only one struggling with an opiate addiction after a pain issue or their only one who has lost a loved one to overdose and then they hear these stories and they say, oh, there's others. And it just takes some of that intensity away when you find a community that's had a similar experience. So for people who are considering sharing their story around some of these things, we don't recommend that they just go out and start talking because they might not be ready. And so we walk people through some experiences to help figure out, is this the right time? And then if they say yes and they know what

their why is and what they want to do by telling their story. Then they walk, in the workshop, we walk them through safe and effective practices to make sure that they're helping and not unintentionally harming themselves or their audience and that they're really working in a way that's going to move the needle for change. So that's, that's one. Then that's on February 26th. February 27th, we have, and so that's really for people with lived experience of mental health addiction, overdose or suicide. February 27th is the, is the fuller slate of certificate-bearing workshops. And for people who are thinking they want to become a trainer, all right? So we just have one train the trainer workshop and it's vital cog in construction.

We've seen a whole bunch of people be really successful in this space. I would say some of the folks that are often incredibly impactful are our safety people. People who are already really great facilitators in training. They understand how adult education works. They know how to engage their audience. And for some of our trainers, they also have a lived experience. So they are really able to make that training come to life in a way that's very impactful and culturally resonant with their community. We also have people coming from HR or benefits. They can come into the training and speak in a way that the audience really understands how the benefit works, how they help, what to expect when they access it. So sometimes it's kind of

cool to have a safety person and someone from HR co-trained. What is a secret sauce piece is those people who have benefited from these kinds of conversations or these kinds of resources. And they can say, when I called 988, either to help myself or a loved one, here's how it was helpful to me. And then it's not some outsider saying this. It's someone inside the community. So all of those folks and others have really made a difference. Mental health advocates that want to learn more about the construction industry who are well-versed in things of suicide and resources can learn about the construction industry so they can help their community as well. It's a full day. And by the end of the day, you will have the credentials and more often than not the confidence

to go off and do these trainings by yourself and your community or alongside someone else. Okay. No, that makes sense. I wanted to get into a little bit about you had some five content tracks that you guys are getting to get into. And that's the main conference piece, correct? Yes. So the conference itself is organized around these five tracks. And our goals are really threefold. Number one is we want to build community. We want to have people come together, learn from each other, stand in solidarity, have this sense, because sometimes when you're out there doing this work by yourself or in a small team, it feels daunting and like something added to your job. But when you come together, you get refueled, and that's what we want. We want people to

walk away with fire in the belly that they are connected to a mission that matters. So that's one. Number two, we want to spread the emerging practices because a lot of the research hasn't caught up at all with what's happening out there. But we have, we have some preliminary data, so preliminary impact that we can build momentum on. And we want to connect the researchers who are out there doing things with the people on the ground. So they can see what it actually looks like and they can form better research questions and then kind of feedback their findings to the community. And lastly, we want to make sure that people are connecting the dots, connecting the dots between job site safety and worker health to mental health.

Because those things have been operating in silos for forever, but they're absolutely connected. So the five tracks are kind of how we're organizing these goals so that people can pick and choose which ones they want to go into. Yeah. And I think that that piece has been one that we struggled with as an industry is, you know, me being third generation. I can think of my dad and my grandpa's experience, nothing like mine. But they didn't have a.

talk about their personal lives. They, you know, they even said, like, it was like not even a conversation. You wouldn't even know if someone was married. You wouldn't know if they had kids. So, like, it was always about putting your head down and working and working hard. And even the accountability and the hats on the back and things like that, it just didn't happen. And I think that talking about people's lives and getting that, I know we talked about it before where you say how you're doing, but then you need to ask, how are you doing?

doing, you know, because we struggle with that as as leaders in the industry. And I think that's just one starting point that you can have with your staff meeting. It's like, let's change the way that looks. Yeah. So one of the things we're going to be doing at the summit is a, we call it a fireside chat. So we have an expert, Melissa Dolman, who's going to come in and have a fireside chat with someone who is on the younger side of the workforce and someone who is more closer to retirement on the older side of the workforce and talk about generational differences around the viewpoints of this. Because like you said, your father and grandfather really had a different way of thinking about this. And the emerging workers, especially the Gen Zs, you know, they've been socialized in social,

emotional learning since preschool. They're completely fluent in it, and it's not a big deal. So you've got kind of these extremes and how do we deal with this? And what Melissa's going to talk about is, you know what, come together, come together, understand. and each other's viewpoints because there's actually benefit in both. And if we can understand how we can work together instead of always pointing the finger about, you've got it wrong. No, you've got it wrong. You know, all those memes, right?

Hey, okay, boomer. You know, no, like, listen to each other because there's actually a lot of wisdom in the perspectives. And they're far more similar than there are differences, actually, when you take off the kind of superficial divisiveness. There's actually a lot more similarities in the context. experiences. And so, again, when we can build that empathy, we're better. So that's going to be a big part of the conversation tool. And not just generational differences, but there's also kind of race and

ethnic ethnicity differences around mental health. Gender differences around mental health. And so we're really going to start to try to bridge the gaps between all these perspectives so that we can really work together to advance the movement. Yeah. And you talked about having one of those tracks was that culture of care and psychological safety. What does that mean? What does that mean? What does that, what does that mean to you? Yeah. So, you know, like most places, the industry started way downstream. So what do we do when there's a catastrophic moment around mental health?

Somebody's having a psychotic break, maybe related to trauma, or, you know, they've already died of overdose and suicide. Or like, it's really, and for me, that's like responding when there's a heart attack already happening. It's late. And our chances are less. positive that we're going to be able to turn everything around. We still got a chance, but it's a lot harder and a lot more traumatic for everybody involved. So the idea of culture of care and psychological safety is let's move some of the energy upstream and figure out how do we create a culture in an organization where it is okay to reach out and ask for help. And it's understood,

like as a matter of fact thing that we're all going to go through tough times in our life and that we have a sense that the resources are going to be helpful. and that they're accessible. And then the psychological safety piece, I mean, I just had a training today. I'm up in Cheyenne working with a contractor here about how do we help managers drive this culture of psychological safety. You know, in the United States, psychological safety is largely been understood as I feel okay to bring up that I've made a mistake or that I have a better idea than the status quo.

But it also applies to mental health. It really is about vulnerability. Do I feel like you are going to have my back, or are going to be? if I share with you something vulnerable about myself. And that could be I'm living with addiction. You know, my parent just died by suicide, whatever it is. Do I feel like you're going to try to understand me and have my benevolence in your heart? Or are you going to kick me to the curb?

Because if you're going to kick me to the curve, which again has been the M.O. Yes. If people are not performing or they had a performance decline, we don't have time for you. Away you go. Yeah. But now we have a labor shortage. And so the cost of replacing people that we kick to the curb is a huge problem. And the people that we have often to replace our emerging workers who are not going to put up with that.

They're going to leave again. So a lot of this churn has also fueled this idea of a mindset and cultural change piece. And the Gen Ziers and the Gen X, you know, the Gen X is there. And the millennials, they're pretty savvy about sniffing you out. If you just got window dressing on this, they're going to figure it out pretty quickly. So you have to really be authentic about your culture change. Right. Yeah, it's such a positive thing with those younger generations.

It's innate in them. It's obviously what they've grown up with, social change and all those things. But you're right. They can sniff it out. And they know how to look beyond the curtains of like, oh, a mission statement. No, no, no. Give me what, what's your action of this company? Like, show me the action pieces.

And that's where you're going to need to be out in the community. You're going to be doing things that matter. And so I love that about them. I mean, they take a bad rap in some ways, but this might be a way that we need them direly. Yes. And the organizations that say we have a mental health program, we have an employee assistance program, they also know that's insufficient. You know, it's one thing to have a benefit. It's another thing to have a culture.

And so that's also what they're looking for. Yeah. And you talk about, you know, long-term, upstream things. I mean, culture change is not overnight. We're talking decades, right? I mean, this isn't even years. Like, it's difficult to change culture. I mean, and a lot of times that is bringing younger people up and bringing that culture with them.

But this is not an overnight thing. Yeah, that's why I said. We're turning the Titanic around and we had a pretty big iceberg that we hit in the middle of it. So being the COVID years hugely impacted everybody's, you know, either disruption or worrying about their kids or job insecurity. like a lot of things happened in that space. So it is very timely and very important. And I think a lot of people are waking up to that. Yeah. I mean, there's a there's a couple things that happened during COVID. I mean, obviously the construction industry, it was, it was just a crazy, busy time for us. You know, people wanted to do remodeling and construction work. We were essential in

those states that had those essential type of things. And it ended up being like, I was like a fireman without a host. It was like, it was out of control. but also on the on the personal side things were out of control so like everywhere we've turned it was like our controlling nature of us right was was removed and me be personally I didn't do good with it because I'm used to controlling my circumstances and now I'm like I don't have control of anything and it was a learning experience for sure and I think that maybe the positive thing out of this is that hey it spotlighted a lot of things but also it spotlighted a lot of things but also it spotlight a lot of personal development things that we're dealing with.

That's right. Yeah. I know I mastered meditation during those years. I'm like, I need something. I need some tools here. And I never really fully gave it my full effort until, you know,

those years because I'm like, I need to bring down my nervous system because I can't focus. So when I start, and I'm not very good at it still, but at least I try. Yeah, no, I'm with you. I'm right there with you.

The second one I want to talk about was the suicide prevention and hope through action, which is kind of what this is. is all about, right? Yeah. So again, this is a perfect example of raising awareness is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to build skills. And, you know, one of the things we talk about is it's, you know, there's a lot of really great trainings out there. Vital Cog is just one. We have QPR, we have safe talk, talk saves lives. You know, there's some emerging trainings that are specific for construction. And they should be thought of like CPR. So you can't just do one and done and

think you've got it. You've got to refresh the training because it's not something you use every day, bring it top of mind, and you need a stratified trading program. So it helps because the jump from like, I need help. And yet I've never thought about needing help. And I don't know how it's going to work. And I don't have time. Like a little bit of a lot. So going seeking professional mental health services is too big of a jump for most people in this industry. So that mid-level training usually goes two ways. And that's around activating the managers to take responsibility for their mental health and model that and drive culture, but also know how to deal with performance issues and mental health emergencies. But it also has to deal with an action step around peer support.

And that also is something that's very exciting and emerging. Like we've seen it happen for decades now in our first responder communities with firefighters and law enforcement and with our military. Again, for the people who the jump is just too big. Peers make a life saving moment for people. And so how do we empower peers to know what their boundaries are? You know, not therapists, they're not counselors, but they can certainly be effective listeners, and they can be that warm bridged into some other type of support if needed. So those are some of those action steps that we're looking at for that suicide hope to action piece. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So the other one I wanted to talk about was the substance use disorders and addictive behaviors. I know,

I know this has always been a part of our industry. I know that the injuries are part of the beginning of a lot of additions, right? And I know that construction, especially the worker force, they get injured often. And a lot of times they're bigger men, bigger humans. They require some, I don't know, some medication sometimes. And I know we had the opioid crisis and you haven't seen that documentary about that crazy disaster. That is an eye opener. And it's still going. It's still a disaster. It's still there. Great. That's awesome. I was hoping that, that that was on the downside. But I mean, it's just, it's like a such a recipe for, for disaster, right? Yeah. So again, you get injured. You go to your doctor. Your doctor gives you

a prescription to help you with unbearable misery. And now we know just one of those pills increases your risk for addiction exponentially. Just one. Just one. And then the pills become hard to find sometimes. So then people move into getting it on the street. And then that runs out. moved to heroin. And of course, fentanyl is a huge killer. So it's a, you know, all kinds of people. Not just those people on the street, you know, it's all kinds of people. Executives, your grandmother, all kinds of people are getting addicted to opiates. And it's a, it's a huge issue of the numbers keep spiking on the death, mostly because of fentanyl all the time. So part of what we're doing in the, we're doing a lot of things in the space. And that's been a part of the evolution.

of this as well. It started off with the suicide prevention trainers. And now it's expanded to this whole other thing where we're going to address mental health more generally, but we're also having a very, very focused and intentional part of the conference on addiction and overdose prevention. So we're going to have a Narcan training. So Narcan is the opiate inhibitor that you can start to stop an overdose while it's occurring and saves lives all the time. People can, any day person can actually do that if they have the right, you know, the right injection piece and the skill to do it. There's also a number of addiction recovery experts that are going to be talking about, you know, what to expect from recovery. Who needs medical detox and how does that work? What does the

addiction recovery process look like? I mean, the trials and tribulations, 12 step. So many questions. If you're not, if you're not an addiction recovery yourself, you have no idea. You have no idea about how entrenched people are, it's not just their choice, their bodies are compelling them. They are, they're physiologically dependent on this. And if you tell somebody to stop cold turkey, they've been drinking a fifth of whiskey for 10 years, you run the risk of killing them because the detox can be life-threatening because it throws the heart off, like all kinds of things like this we'll be talking about and modeling for people. Here's a good action step. Here's a good action step. Here's something you can do. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

Even looking back several years ago, you know, many people did not have an experience with someone with suicide and or drug abuse. And now I think most people would be picking both hands up with that, right? And that shows you how fast and rapid this problem has gone, you know? You know, I think those, these issues have always been there. I think in earlier days, people made up different stories about it. So, you know, Uncle Joe, you know, died from a car crash or whatever it was. A lot of this was in the closet or people just didn't talk about it at all. So there wasn't a conversation.

And so that's part is that we're having a lot more conversations about it. And, you know, it's very interesting. One of the things I do in our workshops is I have people, you know, do anonymous and confidential polling. And some, I'll watch the polls because they move right in front of me. And at first people are like, I don't have these issues. And they're like, oh, but what about Pete from high school? Oh, and what about, you know, my grandfather, who I'm pretty.

pretty sure was addicted to alcohol, but I never thought of it that way as a kid, but I look back now on, yeah, you know, that kind of thing. Also, do I see that I don't have these issues then go down and all the other ones go up? So we also suppress these memories about these hard things in our lives. And until somebody points it out, people are like, oh my gosh, there was those friends in high school or, you know, these kinds of other things. And at the time, they were devastating. But now I am in my 50s and I don't think about that all the time. But I was certainly impacted as a, as a youth or, you know, growing up or something. Sure. So but definitely the thing that has most definitely increased is the opiate addiction piece. There's no doubt about that. In fact, here's a piece of good news. I know you're searching for good news. Younger adults are actually drinking less. Yay. They're drinking less than their older counterparts. You know, they're just, it's just not, you know, that, you know, really out of control binge drinking, you know, especially in the, in the younger years, is, you know, is moving in the right direction. So, yay for progress.

I have your hat on that one then. The other one I want to talk about was, what innovations in mental health? What are those innovations? Yeah, so that's another one of our tracks, innovations in mental health. Because, again, when people think about, oh, mental health, I have an employee assistance program,

check the box. Right. Yeah, I roll my eyes. I'm like, how many people are using your employee assistance program? Well, I don't know. We'll go check. Oh, it's 2%. All right.

So it's not a benefit that's helping you. So we need to think about some gap-filling things. So, for example, in my introduction, you brought up man therapy. So I was one of the co-founders when we started that in 2013. And the way we got to that place in large part is we interviewed a bunch of men who had experienced a near miss around suicide or had survived a suicide attempt. And we said, what did you need? What did you need in that moment?

and or even like backing up from that moment. What did you need before it become catastrophic? And how did we reach you? And they said a whole bunch of things. They said a lot of things around peer support. They said things about I need to, I need to check in with myself. Do you have a tool where I can just kind of check in with myself and say, am I drinking too much?

The brain scan thing? Is my anger a problem? Should I be worried about my sleep? Before you like send me away somewhere, can I just like get a little benchmark if I should be worried? And so we do. And then they finally said, you know, make it funny. If you make it funny, you know, we'll relax into the conversation and we might even pass it along to other people.

So that's what mantherapy.org is about. It's really about using humor to bring in some really hard-to-reach men, usually who will adhere to some of those traditional norms of masculinity around self-reliance and stoicism to just, you know, have a different point of view. And so that's one example of an innovation. Another one that I'm a big fan of is job site wellness. So there's a bunch of these job site wellness initiatives where you don't wait for the person to like take time off from work and drive across town and park their car in front of the clinic. You know, all of these things are barriers for people to actually go seek help.

You go to where they are. Like we say, we fish where the fish are. We show up on a job site, not me personally, but there's companies. They show up on a job site. And one of the ones that I really love is athletic training solutions. They, their brand athletic training is around top-notch athletes, right? So that's where they came from. They were training top-notch athletes to perform at the highest level.

And we know from listening to all the Olympians that, yeah, there's a lot of physical training in there, but there's equal measure mental training. And how did they keep their mental health at the peak? Because if they don't, you know, like Simone, they can have. a catastrophic outcome in their athletics, right? So it's about hand in hand, physical and mental and spiritual and emotional, like the whole picture. So they go to the job site and they say, which is true, construction workers are top-notch athletes. And if you want to be performing at the best for a long period of time, you've got to not only like lift this correctly and

make sure you got your safety goggles, safety glasses on and all that, you've got to work on the mind and the spirit. You've got to work on the whole package because otherwise you're going to get burnt out. You're going to develop an addiction. Like they don't go on the negative. They go on the positive. Let's do these things so that you are performing at the top, top capacity peak performance as many days as possible. And I love that because people much rather strive to be better than escape being broken. We want to strive to be better. So they're great. What was that company name that you said? Athletic Training Solutions. ATS, I think they go by now because they do more. than athletes. But there's others. And I remember hearing models of this from Australia like 10 years ago.

And I was like, that's a winning idea or another model. So they're literally like walking around the job. So just checking in with people casually. Another model is they pull up with an RV or a van. And you know, you're out in the elements. It's freezing or it's 100 degrees. And everybody gets to rotate through the RV or the van to do their wellness check. Well, first of all, yay, they get out of the You know, they get a snack. And they're talking to a wellness person about their blood pressure. I want to quit smoking. I want some help with my nutrition and depression and addiction and all kinds of other things.

And nobody knows what's happening in the RV because everybody's rotating through. That's cool. Love it, right? So these are the kinds of innovations we're talking about. How do we break the model of if you're depressed, seek help and the only help. is called EAP, which is, if you have a model, that's what you think the model needs to be. It's got to be a lot more than that. And the people who are going to give you insight on how to innovate are the people who've lived with it,

who've lived through it, you know, they're going to have some really good ideas about what the barriers are and kind of where the levers are that we can really pull for change. So, yeah, what's your take on the online therapy? I mean, obviously through COVID, no one can find a therapist or psychologist or not, I mean, you were six months out. So there's kind of a shift, you know, to online, Zoom, that type of thing. And that's out there now, obviously. What's your take on that?

Is that here to stay? It's definitely here to stay. So what COVID forced the hand that was blocking that work from before largely scaling was there's a lot of like state licenses. So it's hard for people. Anyway, COVID's like, ah, we got to do this out. Things just started proliferating. Yeah.

But like some of these. the addiction recovery stuff that also popped up then and earlier through the opiate crisis, there's a lot of predatory or not quite, not, the services are not good. And it was entrepreneurs and some of them well-intentioned and some of them out there to make a buck. And the problem with the construction industry in this space is they don't know how to evaluate the programs. Right. And so I keep telling people over and over, do not Google.

Do not Google mental health resources because what pops up at the top of your search? The people who paid for advertising dollars. So all you know is they're really good at marketing. And that should also tell you something because you're probably going to find the more credible ones, word of mouth. And they've probably also been around a couple of decades. And they probably also have some very important seals of credibility. but the construction industry doesn't know what those things are. So when we partner with organizations,

we do what we call a mental health resource audit, which basically says, here's the questions to ask, here's the things to look for, to have a fighting chance to get a good resource. So with telemental health, yes, it's here to stay, but do your homework. Because people can say,

I'm a behavioral health coach. That means nothing. Anybody can say their behavioral health coach. There's no credentialing there. And so I've been really working with, organizations like Brightside Health and a number of others who have the top tiered professionals who are also ready, willing, and able to handle the most intense mental health issues. Because if it's something, if somebody whispers something about, I don't want to be here

anymore, that behavioral health coach freaks out. And they're going to hot potato you all around. And there's a person who desperately needs to be heard and feel like they matter. And the unqualified mental health professionals are going to pass them all. around because they're afraid. So I'm looking for that kind of short list of highly qualified providers who we know are not only ready. They have all of the state of the art training and systems in place, but they're enthusiastic. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for enthusiasm. I'm looking for, you know what? This is where I get to do my best work. Bring them, bring them to us, bring them to me. We are ready because we know we can save lives and make a

difference. That's the kind of provider I want to go to or I want to send my loved one to. So we teach them. We go through this whole process where we kick the tires and ask these questions and figure out where the good resources are. And then we pull together a short document, just five resources that have been highly vetted. And that's what we socialize out into, especially the managers. We say get to know these five resources because when somebody's coming to you, we want you to have confidence that you know what you're doing with that bridge to resources. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks. Thanks for that. I was wondering that myself. The last one, track you're going to talk about is physical and environmental root causes for mental health challenges. Yeah. So again, this is a narrow view that we're trying to expand. The narrow view is that this is all about mental health and mentally ill people. If we just get those troubled people, if we just get those troubled people, the counselors, everything is going to be good. And we're saying, yeah, that is true. That happens. People with mental health conditions do experience a lot of distress. but you know what, the environment also matters.

And if you have a very toxic environment or your pressure on your workers is so high, it doesn't matter how many counselors we have involved, right? If there's discrimination, prejudice, bullying, hazing, harassment, lack of job variability, lack of job autonomy, effort, reward, and balance. There are like a slew of what we call psychosocial hazards that are happening in workplaces every day that are driving distress and despair.

And until we, like, mitigate some of that, this stuff isn't going away. In fact, in other countries, they're holding workplaces accountable when they know they have toxicity, these psychosocial hazards, and they don't do anything about it. They're going to be held accountable.

So we don't have that here yet, but it's coming. So that's part of it. The other part of that track is about physical root causes. So, again, things like pain, is connected to these devastating mental health outcomes. Things like traumatic brain injury, things like getting a diagnosis of cancer for yourself or your loved one. All of these things can drive suicidal despair.

So we've got to start connecting the health care providers to this conversation. I worked in a cardiac unit as a rotation in the veterans, the VA of Boston. And my job was to help the families of people who had a heart attack. cope with panic disorder. Because if you think about it, you had a near miss with your heart. Now your brain is hyper alert on anything that goes on with your heart. So you run and your heart goes up and your brain goes, oh my God, we're going to die. Right.

So panic attacks and high levels of anxiety when you have a heart condition go hand in hand all the time. So things like that, connecting the dots. Yeah. And all makes sense. So I mean, where do you see this summit going? I know that you, you know, we've seen the jump from three years ago to today, but What's your goal, your long-term goal for it? Yeah.

So our theme this year is on scaffolding and scaling. So we moved from awareness to take action. And this one, we're really focused on building infrastructure. So OSHA being involved, we're going to start seeing some standards and some policies. We've got research involved so we can start to know a little bit more about what's working and what's not and then scale the things that are working. We're building up these train the trainer programs, that kind of thing. So in the next few years, I'm going to see a lot of this,

we're going to see a lot of this infrastructure being built out so that we can impact more and more people and make sure that what we're doing is making the right kind of difference. We're also going to learn a lot more from other countries. Canada, Australia, the UK, they are between 10 and 20 years ahead of us. But because we kind of get in our bubble here in the United States, we're not always as open to learning from other countries,

but now we are. And then I really believe the next thing that's going to happen, construction is so out in front of many other industries, even ones that have high rates, the extraction industry, mining, oil and gas, not nearly as strategic as construction, manufacturing, transportation. They've all got pockets of activity, but it's not nearly as like what we're seeing now with the strategy and the whole community learning together and building things. So I'm seeing that the construction industry is going to have an impact more broadly on workplace suicide prevention, mental health promotion, addiction, recovery, and overdose prevention, that people are going to be looking over and going, what are they doing over there in construction? Huh. And it's having an impact. Let's learn from them. And that, of course, is where we're going to start to impact lots of lives. So when it comes to like suicide prevention, I also want to make the point that you don't see outcomes right away.

if there are at least 300 people who seriously think about suicide for every death that we have. So really getting a change in the death rates is going to take a little while because we've got to impact all the things that go before that. But that's also what we're hoping for, right? The ultimate end game is that those rates come down in a significant way with addiction, overdose, and suicide. Yeah, why does the data take so long? I've had that question asked to me, and I have no idea. But why is the day that it takes so long to get to us? I know that a lot of times, especially these construction minds, where we're like, we want to see the way.

Right. So it's a permutation of factors. So at the very level of cause of death, determining suicide is not easy. It's easier if there's a note, but there's only a note in about a third of the cases. So when there's not a note that definitely says I did this on purpose, then we're left with looking at the evidence. Now, if it's a self-inflicted gun or hanging, it's a little bit more awful. obvious. But if it's a fall, a drowning car crash, over, yeah, it's vague. It's vague. And if you are, you know, in the position of being a medical examiner or a coroner, you've got to have some awareness of

what to look for in what we call the psychological autopsy. So just the very basic bones of determining cause of death is complicated. Then we've got to verify all of that. And then it goes to the county to state, state to the CDC. Then they do their national violent death reporting, cataloging of all the data, then they got to verify that. Then it eventually comes out to us. So it is a long process. And frankly, five years ago, we did not have good infrastructure around that. We didn't have like standard procedures around that. We didn't have a good way to pull the data up to national. It was clunky because frankly, people didn't think it was worth investing in. Now they do. Now they do. So it's building. And like we just got this study coming out, we're getting better at it. It's never going to be

instantaneous for all the reasons that I just mentioned, but hopefully we can get it down from, you know, two years to six months in the near future. Yeah, I mean, there's so much exciting things happening. Like you said, our industry is, you know, we have a problem, but we recognize it and now we're taking action. And I expect nothing less of our industry. That's definitely how we handle things. And it's, I'm very proud of a lot of us for taking that step forward and doing what we can. And I know it's a little bit of a slow process sometimes, but you, you obviously are seeing the wins a lot more than we are. And so I'm thankful for you for being in the fight, the day-to-day fight. And I look forward to supporting the summit. I'm going to try to get there for one,

but for two, we're going to sponsor. We're going to figure out a way to make this a priority every year. So just, just count me in to help the way we can. Well, this certainly helps. And you know what you brought up a point that I want to end on, which is we need bold leadership. And that's another reason why I'm in love with construction. If you told me 10 years ago that this is where I'd spent on my time, I'd be like, really, I don't see them adopting this or me for that purpose. And, and you know what? I don't want to be anywhere else. Really, I love working in construction because you're like, you know what? Let's construction figure this out. We are problem solvers and we are bold and visionary thinkers. Like, give us a daunting problem. We love it. We're going to sort that

And then you do, right? So look at all the things that have happened in safety just in a generation because people said, well, what if we believed that no one needed to die when they came to work? What if we believed that was true, what would we do differently? So the same thing is happening here. What if we believed that addiction, overdose, and suicide didn't have to be a consequence of working in construction? What would we do differently?

And that, ooh, that gets me up every day going, oh, let's do this, you know, because construction's figured it out. Yes, definitely. So the link, I did put the link. of your website, salliespenterthomas.com, that's going to get a hold of you, correct? Yes. Yes.

And then that construction working minds website, not only has the summit, but has all kinds of other resources. The Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention is the co-host with the United Suicide Survivors International. So two nonprofits are at the helm of this, pushing this forward. Shout out to my co-chair, Sonia Bowman.

She's been amazing to work with. We have a great committee that is, again, cross-cutting through the industry. We got labor, contractors, manufacturers, all kinds of people coming together to make this happen. And it's been such a fun, such a fun project to work on. Well, thank you so much, Sally Spencer Thomas, for being here and for your efforts. We commend you and we'll support you as much as we can.

Thank you. I hope to see you all, the summit. Take care. Bye-bye, everybody. Right. Bye. Thank you so much for being here. Another episode of Construction Executives Live.

I have the links in the LinkedIn chat. I'll add some more so that you guys. guys make sure you get to that event bright link which is the end one where you can get your tickets if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me or sally spencer thomas or any there's a link there to questions as well so please do your research if you can't get there sponsor tell others about it we're going to share this message on social media so you do the same it's you never know who it's going to impact so don't be afraid to share and we just appreciate you uh tuning in and listening to the end. So thank you so much. And we'll see you next time. Bye.

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