NWAGC C3 Committee

The Inland Northwest AGC is proud to offer a NEW resource for employers to help address mental health in their workplace. This sample APP policy will help you incorporate mental health and suicide prevention into your existing written safety and health programming, and offers you and your teams a wealth of open-source tools and resources. Find it here. 

• In Washington State in 2018, we lost six workers to on-the-job injury. In that same time period, however, we lost 125 of our industry’s people to suicide. We are not properly addressing worker safety if we are not addressing this critical issue.
• In Washington State in 2020, we lost six workers on the jobsite related to mental health. Three were on-the-job overdoses and three were on-the-job suicides.

Suicide is a critical issue in our communities. Suicide rates are climbing, and in our industry, we lose people — fathers, mothers, sons and daughters — to suicide at six times the national average. Many things feed this epidemic and, while no one program or tool will eliminate suicide, putting resources and support in the right places, upstream, are proven to help make a difference.

We encourage all firms to have their employees put the 988 Lifeline, the Suicide Prevention Hotline (800-273-TALK) and/or the Crisis Text Line (text “hello” to 741741) in their phones. These lines of support are not solely intended to help people struggling with thoughts of self-harm, but also for those who care about them, and for people who are struggling and want help before considering self-harm. These lifelines can by contacted by anyone, including concerned friends, family members, and colleagues.