Colorado construction workers, pressured by longer, harder hours, die by suicide twice as often as other professions

Tyler Olson was whip-smart as a kid—“Mister Brainiac,” his mom, Terri Olson, remembered. After graduating from Colorado School of Mines, he found a job doing construction at an oil field.

Pulling long hours, Tyler navigated a high-pressure, high-stress environment. A drinking habit he’d started in high school became the medication to cope with it all, said Terri.

By age 24, “depression set in hard,” said Terri, who lives in Jefferson County. “We tried to get him help many, many times, as he tried to get his own help.” But challenges in accessing mental Health care—including months-long wait times to see a provider—proved to be insurmountable.

In the summer of 2011, Tyler died by suicide at age 25.

Tyler’s story is too common in Colorado, where suicide rates are the sixth highest in the nation and disproportionately prevalent in the construction industry. Of the 1,370 Colorado adults who died by suicide in 2021, some 13% (180) worked in the construction industry, making that by far the most affected profession and higher than among unemployed and non-working people.

Between 2017 and 2021, the suicide rate among people working in construction was 70.41 per 100,000 people — nearly double the average rate for all workforces combined (41.35), according to the state Office of Suicide Prevention’s 2023 legislative report.

The majority of people affected are white men, and the impact is disproportionate. Of the 2,137 construction-worker suicide deaths in Colorado between 2004 and 2019, 79% were among non-Hispanic whites, 17% were among Hispanics, and the remaining 4% among other racial and ethnic groups. Colorado’s construction workforce, on the whole, is roughly 52% non-Hispanic white, 44% Hispanic, and 4% other racial and ethnic groups, according to 2019 data analyzed by the Colorado Center on Law & Policy (a Colorado Trust grantee). More than 97% of all construction worker suicide deaths during the 2004-19 period were among men.

The problem is so severe — both in Colorado and across the country — that Americans working in the construction industry are four times more likely to die from suicide than the general population, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Within the industry, construction workers have a five-fold greater chance of dying from suicide than from a work-related injury, per 2018 data analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Suicide is complex,” said Lena Heilmann, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Office of Suicide Prevention. “There’s never one reason people feel suicidal, attempt suicide, or die by suicide.”

Still, certain realities about the industry help explain the prevalence of mental health issues. For one, construction is a male-dominated industry, said Sally Spencer-Thomas, a Colorado-based clinical psychologist, suicide prevention expert and president of United Suicide Survivors International. Roughly 90% of the workforce is male, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and across all industries, men are much more likely to die by suicide than women — nearly 80% of Americans who died by suicide in 2021 were male, according to CDC data.

But that doesn’t fully explain the phenomenon since suicide rates in the construction industry are still higher than in other male-dominated sectors, Spencer-Thomas said, like agriculture or oil and gas.

Nick Williams, director of operations at Absolute Caulking & Waterproofing, a commercial contractor in the Denver metro area, pointed to contributors like the seasonality of construction work and the resulting financial instability.

“We’re not really guaranteed our next paycheck,” he said. “That provides a lot of upheaval in someone’s personal life.”

Moreover, the pressure to stay on budget and schedule creates a “very high-stress environment,” said Mohammed Hashem Mehaney, an associate professor in the construction management department at Colorado State University. Those stressors are compounded by current labor shortages that cause existing employees to work longer, harder hours.

“Your social life can be affected,” Hashem Mehaney said. “And with all of this pressure, definitely you’ll have some anxiety sometimes, if not a lot of times.”

Additionally, the inherent danger of construction work can contribute to stress and anxiety, Williams said. And when that danger results in injury, access to opioid prescriptions can morph substance use into substance misuse. Some 14.3% of construction workers struggle with substance use disorder, compared to 9.5% of all full-time workers, according to a 2015 report by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Substance use can be a contributing factor to suicide, said Heilmann.

Moreover, an industry culture of normalized alcohol use — at events or conferences, and at home as a stress coping mechanism — can further exacerbate the issue, Williams said. The same 2015 paper found that 16.5% of people working in construction reported heavy alcohol use (defined as having five or more drinks on the same occasion), nearly double the rate of all full-time workers (8.7%). Research shows people with alcohol use disorders have a greater risk of suicide compared to the general population.

The “tough-guy syndrome”

Then there’s what Williams refers to as the “tough-guy syndrome,” where some workers are reticent to admit they are struggling with anxiety, depression, substance use or suicidal ideation. That’s the mentality Tyler wrestled with, Terri Olson said, and it can make those who are vulnerable less likely to seek help.

Jose Ballejo, a pipe fitter who works in Fort Carson and lives just north in Colorado Springs, can relate. After serving in the U.S. Army, Ballejo found the transition from military life to construction seamless, given the similar cultures.