Craig Bryan, Psy.D., M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the University of Vermont Medical Center’s suicide care clinic, was quoted in a New York Times article about the high suicide risk for construction workers.

“There’s this high density of risk with this community,” Dr. Bryan says.

The construction industry has one of the highest suicide rates of any major industry in the country, second only to mining, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Add in drug overdoses, where construction workers die at a greater rate than workers in any other industry, and a bleak picture emerges of a population in crisis.

Construction is already among the most dangerous jobs in the country, with about 1,000 people dying each year from work-related injuries, more than any other industry. But five times as many workers, 5,100, died by suicide, and 15,900 died from drug overdoses, in 2023, according to an analysis of the most recent federal data by the Center for Construction Research and Training, an occupational safety organization. While the number of overdoses declined from 2022, from 17,000, the number of suicides remained virtually unchanged.

Why?

Read full story at the New York Times

This story was also covered by the Bennington Banner, Boston Globe, Boston.com, the (Spokane, Wash.) Spokesman-Review, and Vermont Public.