For decades, the toughest job in construction has not been pouring concrete or climbing iron. It has been admitting that something is wrong.
That is the conviction behind “Stronger Than the Silence: The Road to Recovery Begins with a Voice,” a new short film released in May 2026 by the Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention, SAFE Project and the Turner Foundation.
The 10-minute video, premiered during a CIASP webinar, features four workers describing addiction, suicidal ideation and recovery in their own words. It is being distributed free to jobsites across the United States and Canada along with a companion guide, individual story clips and a printable resource sheet in English and Spanish.
“By speaking openly, these individuals are helping break the stigma and show that mental illness and addiction is not a personal failure,” CIASP Executive Director Sonya Bohmann said during the premiere. “They are human challenges that many of us face, and recovery is absolutely within reach.”
The numbers behind the project are stark. The U.S. construction industry recorded a male suicide rate of 56.0 per 100,000 workers in 2021, well above the rate of 32.0 per 100,000 for all U.S. working-age men, according to a 2023 analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using National Vital Statistics System data. The construction and extraction occupation group, which includes carpenters, electricians, ironworkers and other field trades, registered a male rate of 65.6 per 100,000, the highest of any major occupational group. The CDC also reported that the U.S. working-age suicide rate has climbed roughly 33% over the past two decades.
The picture on addiction is just as troubling. Construction workers die of drug overdoses at roughly three times the rate of the average U.S. worker, according to The Center for Construction Research and Training, known as CPWR. Workers in construction account for about 16% of opioid overdose deaths among the working population, even though they make up about 7% of the workforce. In 2023 alone, roughly 5,000 construction workers died by suicide and nearly 16,000 died from overdoses, CPWR reported.
Mental health concerns short of crisis are climbing, too. Self-reported anxiety among construction workers rose from 12.6% in 2018 to 18.4% in 2024, while the share who said they needed mental health care but could not afford it nearly tripled, from 2.0% to 5.6%, according to CPWR’s September 2024 data bulletin.
For the four workers featured in “Stronger Than the Silence,” those numbers translate into specific memories.
Chris Lalevee, a business agent and Member Assistance Program coordinator for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825 in New Jersey, said he fought his struggles in isolation for years. “I never told anybody. I fought that alone,” Lalevee said. “And one of the biggest reasons for me being a peer was I would have given anything for somebody to talk to that might have understood it, or at least listened.”
Mike Dirksmeyer, a project superintendent for Turner Construction in Boston who is in his sixth year of recovery, said he was terrified of speaking up. “I was afraid to be the person to raise my hand. I was afraid of losing my job. I was afraid of losing my family,” Dirksmeyer said. He credited peer support for getting through. “I could talk to doctors, psychologists, all types of different people about what I was going through, and they would give me advice, but I wouldn’t take it to heart,” he said. “I only took it to heart and made changes when I would talk to another addict, because I believed their story.”
Julia Flanagan, a surveyor and operating engineer with IUOE Local 15D in New York City, marked nine years of recovery in April. She said other people’s openness gave her permission to share her own. “I was so wrapped up in guilt and shame. I had no freedom whatsoever,” Flanagan said. “I don’t live that way anymore. I’m free today. And it’s all because of walking into this new life of recovery, and because other people put their hand out to me. So I just want my hand to be out to others today.”
Santiago Heidlett, a Sheet Metal Workers Local 28 member in New York City with eight years in recovery, said his message to coworkers is plain. “Just give people the space. Pull somebody to the side,” Heidlett said. “If you see them struggling, if you see them not performing like themselves, pull them to the side and say, ‘Hey, man, just noticing that you’re not doing so good today. If you need to talk, I’m here.’ Because if I’m drowning and you throw a straw in my way, I’m grabbing that straw.”
Bohmann said CIASP set out to make the stories raw and unscripted because polished campaigns rarely cut through on a jobsite. “We knew we wanted to share stories, but we also knew they needed to be the right stories, and they needed to be told in the right way,” she said. “We knew they needed to be raw. We knew that they needed to be honest, to be unscripted.”
CIASP, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that became a stand-alone organization in 2018 after being incubated by the Construction Financial Management Association, has built its strategy around free, labor-agnostic resources that any contractor or trade union can put to work. Those include a peer-support framework, an anonymous five-minute mental health screening tool linked from preventconstructionsuicide.com, and a downloadable resource guide that walks crews through how to discuss mental health on the jobsite.
SAFE Project, a national addiction-focused nonprofit, served as co-producer. Founded in 2017 by retired Navy Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld and his wife, Mary, after the overdose death of their 19-year-old son, the group consolidates resources on substance use, recovery housing and peer support.
“We’ve been created as a nonprofit to really bring people together instead of having thousands of resources out there when you need some help,” SAFE Project CEO Jeff Horwitz said during the webinar. “What I would encourage you to do is take a look at it the way I generally do, and that is ask yourself questions. The first question is, what resources are out there for yourself? If you’re in crisis, where can you go?”
Horwitz pointed to two national numbers as starting points: the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for acute crises, and 211, a free local and state social services helpline that can connect callers to housing, treatment and other support before a situation escalates. Both are accessible through landing pages on safeproject.us and preventconstructionsuicide.com that mirror the video and its companion resources.
The panelists said the stigma they encountered was tied closely to masculinity, but did not stop there. “It’s a pride and ego issue, and pride and ego can come from anybody, men or women,” Flanagan said. Lalevee put the math more bluntly. “If I had a nickel for everybody that told me, ‘Why can’t you just shake all this off, or just get over it,’ I’d be a millionaire,” he said.
Dirksmeyer said companies looking to start a peer program do not need to wait for a polished training curriculum. “The way that we discussed this on jobsites, we used to treat this as if it’s a safety item, and we would run through our list of safety items in a large-scale meeting,” he said. “Our goal at the moment is to try and get this down onto a peer level. So you have a foreman talking to his workers.” Lalevee said the most important step is simply to begin. “You just have to start it. You have to stop talking and you have to start doing.”
Bohmann said the larger goal is to treat mental health the way the industry treats physical safety, as a core value rather than a priority that can shift with the business cycle. Mental health “has to be part of that core value,” she said, citing a CIASP board member’s framing. “It can’t be a priority, because priorities change, and priorities are often revenue-driven.”
Horwitz framed the broader stakes for an industry that has watched its workforce dwindle even as demand grows. “The number one problem that we face is stigma,” he said. “We’re creating a situation where it’s not comfortable for people to speak up. But we do know that addiction has disease and genetic elements. We do know that mental health challenges need to find coping mechanisms.”
“Stronger Than the Silence,” along with individual 90-second to two-minute clips of each panelist’s story, is available for free download at preventconstructionsuicide.com and safeproject.us. Both organizations encourage contractors to circulate the video on jobsites, link it on internal portals and post the QR code on resource boards.
“Your power and your shared stories will save people’s lives,” Bohmann told the panelists at the premiere. “Even if one person feels seen, understood or motivated to reach out for help because of what you shared today, then you have had the courage and have become the catalyst to make change across our entire industry.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For non-crisis support, including help finding treatment, housing or local resources, dial 211.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Vital Statistics System, “Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2023.
• The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR), “Mental Health Trends in the Construction Industry: A Look at Anxiety, Depression, Psychological Distress, Suicides, and Overdoses,” September 2024 Data Bulletin.
• CPWR, Opioid Overdose Deaths in Construction resources, cpwr.com.
• Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention, preventconstructionsuicide.com.
• SAFE Project, safeproject.us.
• CIASP, SAFE Project and the Turner Foundation, premiere webinar for “Stronger Than the Silence: The Road to Recovery Begins with a Voice.”
