Simpro Talks: Mental Health & MATES in Construction

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, please seek help from a qualified healthcare professional. Additionally, some listeners may find the content discussed in this podcast triggering or upsetting listener discretion is advised./ And remember, even if you think this is something you can handle, you don't have to finish this episode and you can stop at any time. Take care of yourself first. Now, let's get into it. Hey everyone.

My name is James Edward Rapley Sendall, and I'm a field officer at MATES in Construction in Aotearoa – New Zealand. I look after the central Auckland region. I'm here today talk about our program, who we are and what we do.

And then worked my way into a customer service representative in a Hilti store, which was absolutely fantastic. So I was not only able to have a hands-on experience with the tools and the fastest and the industry items that we were delivering to our partners, but also be able to talk to the people who were actually using this equipment. And I quite quickly found myself, as you can already tell. I talk really fast.

I was quite a quiet person before being in that role, and it really opened me up because, you know, this industry itself, construction, is an absolutely fantastic industry full of warm, honest, beautiful characters. And I found myself doing a lot more talking than I was doing actually providing solutions that were Hilti based. But that was just the nature of, of myself. I'm a, I'm a person that loves to know.

What they do, not only what jobs they were working on, but also, you know, what did you do on the weekend on, you know, what is your family like? What relationships, what interests do you have outside of work? So when the opportunity came up once my MATES had started up in 2019, I'd always looked towards it as being, you know, maybe where I would end up or where I would be working with them. So now looking at it two years later, man, It's it really is an amazing place to be.

And this issue itself, the suicide prevention, mental health awareness is very close to home for me. I lost my older brother when I was 12 years old to suicide, and it was something that I never felt comfortable to talk about. Not only. To my friends or family, even my immediate partner, but even to, to others, to newcomers. And it was something that I, I really struggled with.

And through joining MATES and being around other very, very strong leaders and deliverers of the program at the time, I was actually able myself to grow as a person, to be able to open up around that experience and realize that I was still grieving 15 years later on. And to be able to open up and talk about Ben's journey through. Two suicide through hit the struggles he was going through at the time, and also my struggles again.

I was not only impacted by Ben's loss in 2006, but I was also impacted myself in 2014 when I made an attempt on my own life. And again, I was very shy.

I was never confident or able to open up about that experience due to that stigma that had been built up over time, especially as a, you know, as, as a young male or very much taught growing up in the early two thousands, if I was to open up and to talk about my feelings or to show any sort of I guess vulnerability, that, that was not ideal, that was not encouraged, I would week to do so. And the word that was used when I was growing up is you'd be able to emo That was the word I was given.

And, those big roles, it's hard to talk about mental health.

That's why I often start by sharing my story and where I come from, you know, and where my journey is with this issue, because as you've exactly put it, I think most people within our lives have been impacted by this issue. So simply by sharing where I'm at, sharing where my story is and where my journey is, encourage others to do the same.

But I guess where my pitch isn't for that, where I see the value of MATES being is not only bringing out that awareness point of putting, you know, really shining a light onto an issue that has really. It's still even now been quite swept under the rug, not only in in Aotearoa, within New Zealand, within I think the industry specifically, but globally it's not an issue that is discussed very, very frequently.

So where I see the value first and foremost, is in that awareness piece that we are generating, trying to shine that light on towards that issue, but also to develop, you know, capacity.

And to develop, you know, strength of a framework within every business, with every, any organization, with every site, with every trade or every partner that we have within in MATES, to not only go up there and shine that light and talk about that awareness and make that a proud piece of how every company that we deal with does, but also be able to give that organization, that partner, whoever we deal with, the tools to be able to deal with situations when someone may.

Potentially be having suicidal thoughts, maybe just dealing with the stress, maybe with dealing with the many life or work events that come up with an everyday life. I give them the tools to be able to be a suicide safe workplace. And I guess that is my elevated pitch in away is looking at our partner list and I look at the companies that are up there. When I started, we only had one page partners. There was probably about 70 at the time, but now we're sitting about 171 partners. Amazing.

Which is. Oh, exactly. It's, that's why I say it's, it feels like I've been here a lot longer because of the growth of the company over time. And that growth, I think is, I mean that's indicative of not only the success of our program, but also the amount of companies and organizations, wherever they be within our industries and pro included, who have put their hand up and notice that change that needs to be made and how that framework needs to be utilized into their business.

So it shows not only. Is there a problem? We can do something about it and we can move forward to create those workplaces where both help-seeking and help offering behaviors are encouraged. We're breaking down those walls of stigma slowly, and when I've always put up that partner list, I'm very proud to do so. And that's, I think, a show and a sign. The achievement in the progress have made so far. Still a lot of progress to be made though. We'll keep moving forward.

I think if I'm getting my statistics, statistics correctly, sitting at last year, over 200,000 people had been inducted into the training. The program is available in five different states within Australia. We not only have MATES in Construction available within Australia, there's also various offshoots of the program too, and as developed out into other industries, you've not only got MATES and construction, we've also have MATES and energy within the industry.

Industry, but also MATES in mining as well. Absolutely. Huge and such a proud achievement for MATES over in Australia to have that service available to the mining industry being. A very similar one to construction in terms of, you know, industry specific pressures. But also a very proud one that we also shout out as the development of MATES in sport, which is a very, I think, you know, a very key industry to, to many of our countries.

Wherever you live, there is a, you know, a sporting industry and. There is a lot of stress present and it's very key that we acknowledge that. So, however, I am talking about Australia and in New Zealand we only started up a fair few years ago in 2019, so I joined just before the first kind of covid, lockdown and nz. But even then, I could see this very similar trend of that demand being present.

And companies and partnerships wanting to start up to acknowledge those levels and those numbers that are present within the industry and to, to that similar reasoning. We have grown quite prolifically, as I mentioned previously, that time that even I've been present. Our growth and partnerships are absolutely massive. But what those partnerships also do represent is the implementation of our program, and that is our service offering.

So most, most usually how we are interacting with or how people find out about MATES is through our general awareness training, and that's our sort of first level of training. Where we are building awareness. Which, as I said, probably one of our most important steps and why people most often interact with us. It is a 45 to 60 minute presentation usually delivered by PowerPoint in person, always just due to the safety nature of the conversation.

And this is can be done onsite in an office, in a workplace. And that was where we sort of started our, you know, our big journey. That's how most of a lot of people knew about us, especially here in Tamaki, Makoto, and Auckland. As we, they, people would see us out on a big commercial site or within, you know, residential environments, delivering that general awareness training to site workers, to employees with our particular and our screen and our orange and blue right on site.

That's a kind of a big key point of difference between us and many other organizations where the only organization, to my knowledge, In the mental health arena that is boots on the ground, we'll go to that site, deliver that general awareness training if there are fewer numbers. In 15, we'll also run what's called a MATES awareness training.

A shorter, sharper, about 15 to 20 minute spoken word presentation, which is done so to target that residential environment where may only have four to eight people on site of that time. But from there once that awareness is developed, a little bit more of alertness is around in terms of suicide that guess stress and then mentally stress that can happen within an environment, especially within construction. We then aim to install what we call our connectors.

That's the second stage of our program or our accreditation process as to install as many of these connectors as we can. One of our field officers has a great metaphor this for this, which is fire alarms. Because a fire alarm doesn't prevent a fire necessarily. But it can detect if a fire is happening. And that's a bit what our connectors are like. They're not solvers.

And it is where I see the true value of our program because by installing those fire alarms, I like to say champions or lighthouses. That's a metaphor I like to use. It's a lighthouse. That is lighthouse. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they're usually people who already have that empathetic heart may have either been impacted themselves or have a history of being that person that others have gone to.

But by going through that connector training, they will now have the confidence and the framework of conversation to enter into an engagement with someone who may potentially be having suicidal thoughts or just potentially be struggling at that moment. By, by utilizing that connector Safe Talk framework, they can have the confidence not to freeze, not to potentially miss the invitations of suicide or invitations that someone may be struggling or even dismiss.

That is just behavior that that person usually displays or even simply avoid it because it's not their job or they have too much going on. They have the confidence to go into that situation. Be clear, direct and honest. Find out where that person is at, at that time. From there with as many of those we can have, we usually aim from a ratio of about one connected per 20 employees on site or workplace.

This is due to a statistic from the World Health Organization that dictates that one in 20 may have suicidal thoughts over a two week period. So it aligns. I always, it kind of correlates with that statistic, which is quite good for us because, It's easily 20 or more people on any given site that we are interacting with. So if you have at least one connector, it can be that lighthouse searching for those ships, potentially struggling in the surf.

Then it can have those who are a bit, who are a bit more alert, who can detect triage, and find the severity of where that person is sitting. Even just have a brief conversation, a download. Connect that person to a support, whatever that might be from there. And let's get the final stage of our program to create a suicide safer workplace. Is installing at least one assisted trained person per company or site that we work with?

We usually say a regionally available person because if you, you know, if, if you only have one person for a company and that person's sick or they're on leave, they just need to be available. Now assistant, I'm actually wearing the badge here today. It's a little blue one. And it stands for Applied Suicide Intervention and Skills Training.

And it is for those crisis situations where someone on site or in a workplace may be in a crisis, they may be on that metaphorical bridge, they may be struggling, they may have devised or even planned an attempt on their life. And that as a strengthed person has that confidence first and foremost in themselves, and a framework to lean upon to engage with that person and just to keep them safe for now.

Keep them safe in that moment of crisis and to be able to connect them to a support, a service, whatever that person is potentially struggling with at that moment. Just to keep them safe, get them back to where they need to be. I notice none of these steps are solving, they're not trying to fix what that person is going through or Connector is simply connecting that person to help.

Whether that be an assist, whether it be us here at MATES, whether it be counseling and employee assistance program. It is all about creating a pathway to help. Through awareness, through alertness, and then through having a couple of individuals, few who can able, who can be able to intervene in a moment of crisis, creating that framework that organization can lean upon installing that wherever we go. That's sort of what we call our accreditation framework.

And by a site or workplace achieving this, they've done the hard money as we see, and Arturo, they have created that framework. They can lean upon it and maintain it. To be able to take that control of themselves and be proud of it, to empower their workplace to be safer.

So in a funny way, what I and my field officers are aiming to do is slowly work ourselves out of a job, is to create an industry so safe and workplace is so safe that we can just turn up every month and just have a chat with everybody and see what's going on and just be engaged with that partner with that organization to make sure that everything's going along be a part of what they do, and that's where we see true success. In terms of our program and our service offering.

I hope that explains a bit.

Pretty much the case for about four months, and I had to learn quite quickly how to interact and how to kind of get my call cycle together, how to find my contacts and, and touch base with people and develop relationships in a virtual environment. So I'm quite used to interacting like this because we developed quite quickly a service offering for for the virtual space, which we called a virtual toolbox.

And we tried to deliver as many of those as we could to our partners and to our sites so that we could still interact. You know, with those who, who may potentially, you know, be struggling or, you know, may potentially be isolated within that environment. And coming off the back in the lockdowns as everything started to open up, there was a significant amount of growth simply because we could get back out on sites. It, for a while, it was still hard for us to enter two sites.

There was a lot of protocols and whatnot, but those slowly opened up and, and growth was very, very evident. As you did mention, the growth has been, you know, substantial over time and I think for us in MATES as personally, I can't speak to our, to our leader senior management's leadership goals, but I know for myself and within our roles within here in Auckland, we saw growth very substantially.

Over the last year we were simply a one city based organization and over this past year we have grown into a national. Our company available in all the main centers of Aotearoa, so not only Auckland, but also we have two field offices in Wellington, our capital city. And then also now, I think we're, if I'm getting this correct, we've got five offices based in Christchurch, which is the largest city and now South Island, and also two field offices based in Dunedin.

So when I started there was only about six of us, and now we're about 18. So with that growth, it is, it's awesome to see, but with that growth comes a level of responsibility. So now more than ever I know for my team, we're making sure to just double down and look after as much as we can. Our foundation partners, and they're our, you know, our, our top tier one partnerships, they're the ones who essentially give us the ability to have a field officer dedicated to them.

And now more than ever, I'm encouraging our team and my team leader's encouraging us to make sure that we are wrapping ourselves around those organizations, building ourselves as much as we can into that project, into that company, wherever that may be, to make sure that they're looked after. Because we don't want to let our growth and you know, run so fast in our journey to establish ourselves to make sure that we forget about anything or leave any stone unturned. We need to make sure our.

Processes and systems are locked in to make sure that, that that growth doesn't impede future growth. It's as always said, we don't wanna run too fast, that we fall over and it's, that's very key. We've had such big growth, but it's also about being able, being able to slow down, being able to deliver that framework and step away and be here if you need, so to speak.

So a simple inquirer of, Hey, I've heard about this training, or, Hey, I did some training on a project and I'd like to. Have this done within my company or within my group, simply touch base with us there. Because we are territory based, that simply will be flipped and be directed to the person who looks after that, that center, that territory, wherever they may be, so that you can have a localized approach and have a person to develop that relationship with.

And even any inquiries around our statistics, around progress, around any questions, queries, we're happy to answer them. We've got nothing to hide in terms of where we stand and what we do. So we're happy to have a conversation wherever it is. So, First of that oh hundred number triple 1 3 15. And secondly, info MATES net nz, which will go into our, our general inquiries, our office email, and then be directed to the appropriate person.

But I think it's, what I often talk about is a lot, especially within our work lives, we're around the people we work with. Often, more times than not, more than our own family, more than our own friends. So I'd feel safe to say, I'd guarantee that anyone would notice when the members of their immediate team, when their personality will start to change, especially when stressful times start to stack up.

When events of life, such as maybe financial stress, starting to get a bit much, maybe pending legal issues, maybe there's a lot going on right now at home, potentially family issues, a lot of these stresses start to stack up. Someone's behavior will start to slowly change over time, not after one bad day, but when one bad day turns into seven or 14, I often guarantee that we'll notice within our own teams when a particular person's personality will start to change.

And that's what we call a MATES an invitation when someone's personality starts to become out of character, maybe they're someone who's usually quite calm now, they're quite angry, they're shouting, they're getting brief. Or they're usually quite talkative like myself, like I'm one of those checky people. I don't ever stop, as you can tell, I'll just keep going for an hour if you let me. But for me thank you for me. I stop, shut down. I don't reply to any messages, calls, text, nothing.

No one can contact me at all. I behave myself up. I can't even look it on the eye when I'm speaking to them. I absolutely shy myself away from the world. That now that change in behavior will be evident, and that's why we refer to it as an invitation, not a warning sign. We stay clear away from that phrase because I mean, we could sit here for the next half hour and lay and just list examples of warning signs. I can see many from where I'm sitting right now.

Outside sight, there's orange traffic cones telling us to stay away from that location. There's an exclusion zone set up to my left telling me that I can't go into that area. There's all things designed to stop us. The barriers to entry.

Now, why we don't use that phrase is that some people, that's what those warning signs are when someone is struggling and that behavior starts to change either through that physical invitation that we might notice, or even a verbal invitation that someone might say in conversation to us or in pass them, they could speak of feeling lonely, speak of feeling hopeless, speak of feeling like a burden. Many things.

Or even if that is just a gut feeling that we notice when that individual in our team or our circle walks into our space and can't read their minds, but we know something inside is telling us, eh, something's not right with that person today. All those invitations are displays to that person is potentially struggling. They're putting their hand up and showing us unconsciously, even willingly, without realizing it that they could. Be struggling. They might be dealing with a lot.

And for us, when we notice that invitation, even though it may be hard or we encourage MATES just to take even 10 seconds just to send to yourself. It's not an easy thing to do, but just to check in, say, Hey, I've noticed that. And usually you're never stressed by anything. You're never worried by anything in life. In last week, man, you've been. Absolutely furious. You've been desperate. You've been rushing back and forth from it. Are you okay?

Because even if that person is okay, simply just one bad day that's stacked up. If that person is struggling and you have noticed, doing so by checking in can alleviate show to that person that you've noticed. They may have been dealing with those stresses for a very, very long time, and no one has noticed. You have this conversation coming from a place of care.

And even if you have to ask that question multiple times, even on the fourth or fifth time, that person might actually come back to you and say, Hey, I've actually, I'm not alright. I'm not okay. I'm doing so open to the floor of conversation. It's not anything that, there's nothing that can be lost from that conversation. There's only growth between those two people, that relationship that is built and growing forward, if that person does need support.

They can find that support and open that conversation and be honest, rather than hiding those issues away, putting them under the rug, putting 'em behind closed doors and internalizing them and stacking them up. Cuz we are very honest and especially in our industry, construction, we talk a lot about health and safety. Wear are the right gear. You know, we wear our boots, wear, wear our hat, we wear our gloves. We're very, very firm on that.

But our mental health directly informs our physical health. We're leasing such importance on wearing the right gear. We must be making sure we're looking after ourselves as well mentally, cuz those outcomes are very, very correlative. So my, my advice is, it's not always easy, but if you are the person that has noticed, if you have noticed any of those invitations, it's probably likely that you're the person that should ask. And if you don't feel comfortable, it's somebody else up.

Say, Hey, can you, can you talk to Brian? I've noticed he's he's acting a little bit frantic today. In doing so, you're creating a community and creating that framework to lean upon. So multiple people were involved, not just yourself trying to burden the responsibility, taking on on that pressure and what we aim to do, especially our MATES, not to fix anything. Not to solve anything, but just to make sure anyone who is potentially struggling is looked after and they support available.

It would be a lot easier if we could, I could just go, oh yeah, you just ring this number. You just, you, you just, I'll just give you this card and you call this card. It would be a lot easier, but easy. These problems are not easier. What we're trying to do here, what we're trying to reopen this conversation, it's not an easy thing too.

It was not easy to me open up about Ben or my experience when when I first started Max, but sometimes the hardest things in life are the ones that are most rewarding. And by breaking down these walls of stigma that we built up, it's hard breaking concretes hard too. But by doing so, we can have great outcomes. We have more positive and suicide safe outcomes for our workplace organization. Say, that's why I go so in depth. Cause I know for me, I struggled to do that for so long.

Even though I had that experience, I knew what being in that space felt like. I still struggled and froze when I was asked that question to others. But now I'm, I'm confident to do so cuz I've actually had others do it to me. Even within this job. Knowing what that feels like and knowing what that empowerment is, or even that physical feeling when I've walked out of those conversations and knowing that I can even just have one of those to someone else and I walk forward taller, stronger.

So I hope everyone can feel that same. I wish that for everyone. Sorry. It gets me gone.

But if someone's struggling quite easy, and it has happened a lot in the past, is easy for someone to walk past that individual. Which seems UNC correlative in my mind. It makes no sense to walk past somebody who's, you know, potentially about to put themselves in an unsafe environment physically. Why would we do so mentally?

But even by having an informal discussion can achieve so much more informal formalizing, even medicalizing or izing, pathologizing, whatever word you'd like to use, that this issue of suicide, it is, it is preventable. We can do something. So let's, you know, let's talk about, let's get the conversations started. We're all went through stuff. We the same things. I guarantee it.

And even us at the start talking about now being emo, going through that phase, I know that looks like there's many people that too. So let's talk about it. We weren't going through stuff. We've all gotta wait to carry, so let's carry that weight together. Let's do it together and be stronger.

Suicide is preventive of those success stories that we might have of preventions, of suicide or people who have been impacted and survived say for myself and, and for many others who are carrying those experiences. Ones that are not necessarily discussed about those success stories. When things go right, when the conversations I had, they are not necessarily discussed, but they should be celebrating. Should be able to share our stories.

And for those who are potentially struggling or even maybe listening to this to let, just want to let you know that you are not alone in that journey. Wherever you are, I hope that you can reach out to somebody, you can have a discussion with what you're going through at that time. That doesn't necessarily need to be professional help. Doesn't necessarily need to be a counselor or a, you know, a psychologist, psychiatrist, anything clinical.

That could just be someone that you trust within your circle to have a conversation. Whoever that is, and I'm guarantee everyone has one person. For me, it's family and it's my father. That's who I reach out to. I always do whenever things get tough, and about three weeks ago that did happen to me I had that fleeting thought that entered my head and I reached out.

And I always encourage others to do the same, just to have a person that you can go to even multiple that you can turn to when times get tough and you can reach your hand up to. I'm doing so you can share that load, share that weight that you're carrying, and be able to walk forward taller and stronger. Am I doing so? We can. It's a lot better. Everyone has their struggles. Everyone goes, through stuff, we should do it together.

Trying to develop that community, trying to build that community within our industry, because it's there in, in some capacities for what we do. We stand on top of that. We utilize those relationships that already exists to build on top of that so we can achieve those outcomes. That's what it's about. There are communities everywhere we go, put this build on top of those, make sure that we're safer, especially in regards to suicide.

Here goes and hope you have a wonderful day.