Suicide in the construction industry: 2001-2019. Report submitted to MATES in Construction by the University of Melbourne

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in Australia. In 2020, 3139 Australians are known to have died by suicide and of these, more than three-quarters were male. Among Australian males in 2020, suicide was the 10th leading  cause of death (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020a). A substantial proportion of males who die by suicide are of working age (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020a). It has also been observed that suicide varies by workplace and  occupational factors, and some occupational groups and sectors are at higher risk of suicide than others. Within suicide research, therefore, there is considerable interest in understanding the extent to which workplace factors may increase or ameliorate suicide risk. There is also interest in assessing the utility of workplaces as settings in which suicide prevention initiatives can be implemented. One occupational group that is at elevated risk of suicide is that of construction workers. In many industrialised countries, construction workers are known to be at greater risk of suicide relative to nonconstruction workers (Heller et al., 2007; Meltzer et al., 2008; Peterson et al., 2018; Windsor- Shellard and Gunnell, 2019). In Australia, male construction workers have consistently been found to die by suicide at about twice the rate of other male workers (King, T., Riccardi, L., Milner, 2018; Maheen and Milner, 2017; Milner, 2016).