Have a safe mental health day

Hey, everyone. Today is World Mental Health Day, this year focused on suicide prevention, so I wanted to take a few minutes to do my part.

According to the Guardian, between 2011 and 2015, more than 1400 construction workers took their own lives in the UK only.

Sally Spencer-Thomas, lead of the Workplace Task Force within the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention in the US, has recently declared that “The construction industry is kind of a perfect storm of all the risk factors that we know contribute to suicide risk” and numbers over there are even scarier. Architecture is ranked 5th among the affected industries.

We’re loosing a shitoad of people because of bad working conditions, poor compensation, crazy shifts, harassig and bullying. The lousy attitude our industry maintains towards mental health is just another effect in what Brink has defined a «macho, male-dominated culture». And I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe are part of any working place of today’s. It’s not ok for employees to take pride in making their workers cry. It’s not ok for people to take medicine or drugs just to get through the working day. It’s not ok for people to be shamed into taking their medicine in the bathroom or around corners. It is not fucking ok.

What is ok, though, is not to be ok. It’s ok to take a break. It’s ok to need to talk. Our feelings are not just inside our head: the fact that we feel them make them fucking real and no one is entitled to tell you shouldn’t feel a certain way. Reach out. Connect. Move away. Take your time. It’s ok.