CES Hire Blog: Mental Health Awareness week: It?s okay to Say

This week we have focused on mental health as part of our Toolbox Talks session at CES Hire. Appropriately, this week (14th-20th of May) is Mental Health Awareness week. Mental health affects 1 in 4 people in the UK and can range from depression and anxiety to bi-polar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. There is no mental health disorder that is worse than another since it is personal to each and every person and for that individual it is incredibly debilitating. Mental health issues occur when the negative feelings persist and make everyday living a struggle. Of course for some, these negative feelings can be too much to cope with and even lead to something as severe as suicide. The sad and rather shocking fact is that suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 45 and 84 men a week take their own lives. This awful statistic was highlighted by Project 84 (https://www.projecteightyfour.com/), a project that aims to highlight the sad fact that every 2 hours a man in the UK takes his own life. Mark Jenkins, and his collaborator Sandra Fernandez, created 84 individual sculptures which have been placed on the top of the ITV studio building in London. Each figure represented a real life that has been lost. A particularly chilling reminder of the prevalence of male suicide which ties in so much with mental health. In our male dominated construction industry where a hyper-masculine image may be the norm and the phrase ?man-up? a prevalent one, we need to work on shedding this image and realise that it is okay not to be okay. We need to be there for any of our colleagues that may be struggling. Have you checked in with your colleagues today, just a simple ?how are you feeling? will do?

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