The Construction Industry: A Mental Health Emergency in 2025

In construction, we understand the importance of solid foundations. We build homes, hospitals, bridges and skylines that will stand for decades. Yet beneath the steel, concrete and high-vis jackets, the foundations supporting our own workforce are under serious strain.

Mental health has been a quiet crisis in construction for years. Many people have known it, lived it or watched someone close to them go through it. The Chartered Institute of Building’s 2025 mental health research has put the scale of that crisis in front of us again and the picture is deeply worrying.

Despite more conversation and greater awareness across the industry, people are still struggling. In several areas, things have become worse since 2020. We have moved beyond asking whether construction has a mental health problem. The evidence is already there. The question now is whether we are prepared to change the working conditions and culture helping to create it.

This article discusses depression and suicidal thoughts. If you feel that your life is at risk or you are in immediate danger, call 999. You can also find confidential help through Onward Shift’s support for people and the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity.

The Human Cost Behind the Statistics

Statistics can feel distant when we read them on a page. These figures represent people we work beside every day: tradespeople, labourers, plant operators, supervisors, site managers, project teams and senior leaders. They are people turning up while exhausted, trying to concentrate while anxious and carrying pressures their colleagues may know nothing about.

In the last 12 months:

• 94% experienced stress

• 90% reported severe fatigue

• 86% struggled with concentration

• 83% experienced anxiety

• 82% felt overwhelmed

• 60% experienced depression

• 27% had suicidal thoughts

That final figure should stop us in our tracks. More than one in four people in the industry have had suicidal thoughts. Picture a site crew of ten people. Statistically, at least two or three of them may have reached a point where life felt impossible to continue.

They may still have arrived on time. They may still have put on their PPE, made everyone laugh and got through the shift. That is part of what makes this crisis so difficult to see. Struggle does not always look like someone breaking down. It can look like silence, anger, mistakes, absence, detachment or simply becoming very good at saying, “I’m fine.”

We cannot keep admiring people for getting through the day without asking what that day is costing them.

What Has Changed Since 2020?

Comparing the figures from 2020 with those from 2025 shows how sharply the pressure has grown:

• Stress increased by 19%

• Anxiety increased by 27%

• Depression increased by 10%

• Fatigue increased by 14%

• Irritability increased by 19%

• Poor concentration increased by 30%

• Lack of self-confidence increased by 21%

• Feeling overwhelmed increased by 16%

• Suicidal thoughts increased by 7%

Every figure matters but some of these increases expose risks that reach far beyond the individual.

Poor concentration has risen by 30%. In an office, losing focus can mean an email is missed or a task takes longer. On a construction site, a few seconds of lost concentration around moving plant, heavy loads, work at height or live services can change several lives in an instant. Mental health belongs in the safety conversation because our minds travel onto site with us.

Anxiety has increased by 27%. This can mean racing thoughts, a tight chest, disrupted sleep, constant worry and the feeling that something is about to go wrong. A person may appear calm while using enormous amounts of energy simply to make it through the day.

Stress and irritability have both increased by 19%. Irritability is easily dismissed as a bad attitude, especially in a pressured environment. Sometimes it is a warning that someone’s capacity is running out. When the body and mind have been operating in survival mode for too long, patience disappears and ordinary problems begin to feel unmanageable.

Fatigue is up by 14%. Construction has always normalised physical tiredness, but mental fatigue runs deeper. It affects memory, judgement, emotional control and motivation. Rest can feel impossible when someone finishes a long shift, travels home and lies awake thinking about tomorrow’s programme, money, mistakes or the next difficult conversation.

Lack of self-confidence has increased by 21%. When people stop believing in their own ability or value, they may withdraw, avoid decisions and stop speaking up. That matters in an industry where safe delivery depends on people having the confidence to raise concerns before something goes wrong.

Depression has risen by 10%, feeling overwhelmed by 16% and suicidal thoughts by 7%. Each rise tells us that the current approach is falling short. Awareness campaigns have helped to bring mental health into the open but awareness on its own cannot undo the effect of poor planning, excessive workloads or a culture that still punishes vulnerability.

Why Construction Is So Vulnerable

Construction can be rewarding work. There is pride in solving problems, seeing progress and knowing that something real exists because a team came together to build it. There is also pressure woven into almost every part of the job.

Long hours, tight margins, high-risk environments and demanding programmes are common. Many workers spend weeks or months away from their families. Some move between temporary projects without the stability or support networks found in a permanent workplace. Pay can be uncertain, travel can be exhausting and a delay caused elsewhere can still land at the feet of the people expected to recover the programme.

Then there is the culture. Construction remains a predominantly male industry (85%), and many people have grown up with the belief that strength means keeping quiet. You work through pain, deal with problems alone and avoid showing anything that could be interpreted as weakness. “Crack on” can be useful when a difficult task needs to be finished. It becomes dangerous when it is the only response we have to someone who is falling apart.

One plant operator described that reality in painfully simple terms:

“I was working 12-hour shifts. My body was knackered but my mind was worse. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat properly. When I finally broke down on-site, my manager just told me to go get a coffee and ‘shake it off’. That was the last job I ever worked.”

— Anonymous Plant Operator, Midlands

That response may have lasted a few seconds but the message behind it was much bigger: your struggle is inconvenient and we do not know what to do with it. When people receive that message, they learn to hide what they are feeling. The silence spreads, and the organisation loses the opportunity to step in early.

Mental health in construction is struggling because too much of it is still buried beneath humour, busyness, fear and shame.

What Is Driving the Crisis?

The figures also tell us where much of the pressure is coming from:

• 69% cited excessive workload

• 65% cited poor communication from leadership or management

• 64% cited unrealistic deadlines

• 64% cited poor planning and organisation

• 60% cited understaffed teams

These are workplace conditions. They cannot be solved by telling workers to become more resilient while everything around them stays the same.

If nearly seven in ten people identify workload as a cause of poor mental health, workload has to be reviewed. If 65% point to poor communication, leaders need to look honestly at how information is shared, how changes are managed and whether people feel safe enough to speak. If unrealistic deadlines and poor planning are affecting almost two-thirds of the workforce, the conversation has to begin before work reaches site.

The Health and Safety Executive’s guidance on work-related stress identifies six areas that can create harm when they are poorly managed: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change. Construction has exposure to every one of them. Employers already understand the need to identify and control physical hazards. The same discipline should be applied to the conditions that damage mental health.

People are remarkably capable but everybody has a limit. When teams are short-staffed, deadlines are unrealistic and communication is poor, struggling is a human response to sustained pressure. Treating that struggle as an individual weakness leaves the real cause untouched.

Mental Health Is a Safety Issue

Poor mental health affects the way someone thinks, reacts and connects with the people around them. A worker who is exhausted, anxious, depressed or overwhelmed may:

• Struggle to focus on detail

• React more slowly to changing conditions

• Miss a critical safety check

• Make a mistake with tools, machinery or plant

• Withdraw from the team or respond with anger

This has consequences for site safety, productivity, quality and morale. It also affects retention, sickness absence and presenteeism the people who are physically at work but too depleted to function at their usual level.

There is a financial cost to replacing experienced people who have burned out or walked away. There is a bigger human cost when someone is injured, becomes seriously unwell or loses hope because the warning signs were ignored.

Mental wellbeing belongs alongside physical safety in inductions, risk reviews, briefings and everyday leadership. It affects whether people can make sound decisions, communicate clearly and go home safely at the end of a shift.

What Real Action Looks Like

Most people in construction already know mental health is a problem. Another poster or awareness week may open a useful conversation, but change comes from what happens after that conversation. People notice whether leaders listen, whether workloads improve and whether asking for help is genuinely safe.

Train Leaders to Notice and Respond

Managers, foremen and supervisors often see changes before anybody else. They may notice that someone has become withdrawn, irritable, unusually quiet, late, forgetful or less careful. Training should help leaders recognise those signs, start a respectful conversation and connect the person with appropriate support.

Leaders are not expected to become therapists. Their role is to listen, take concerns seriously and know what route to follow. A calm “You don’t seem yourself lately, how are you doing?” can create an opening. The next step is making sure that opening leads somewhere useful.

Make Mental Health Part of Everyday Site Conversation

Mental health should not appear once a year and disappear after the awareness campaign ends. A short check-in during a briefing, a conversation about sleep and fatigue or a reminder of where confidential help is available can gradually make the subject feel ordinary.

Mental health toolbox talks designed for construction give supervisors a practical way to discuss stress, burnout, anxiety, substance use, work-life balance and suicide prevention in language that works on site. The aim is consistency. When people hear the message regularly, speaking up begins to feel less unusual.

Companies can also display Onward Shift’s free construction mental health poster in welfare areas and other visible spaces. A poster will not change a culture by itself but it can remind someone where to turn at the moment they need it.

Review Workloads Before People Reach Breaking Point

The causes of stress need to be addressed during planning, procurement and programming, not handed down to site teams to absorb. Review staffing levels, working hours and the assumptions behind deadlines. Build in recovery time after periods of exceptional demand. Ask the people delivering the work where pressure is building and act on what they say.

There will always be difficult phases on a project. The problem begins when exceptional pressure becomes the permanent operating model. HSE’s stress risk-assessment guidance gives employers a framework for identifying these risks and taking action before they become a crisis.

Improve Communication

Poor communication is more than an inconvenience. It creates uncertainty, rework, conflict and the sense that people have no control over what is happening around them. Leaders should explain decisions, share changes early and make responsibilities clear. They should also create routes for information to travel upwards, because communication is not complete when only management has spoken.

Respectful, honest communication builds trust. Trust makes it easier for someone to say they are overloaded, have made a mistake or need help before a manageable issue becomes a dangerous one.

Provide Decent Welfare Facilities

A clean break room, decent toilets, running water, somewhere warm to sit, access to a phone charger and a private space to make a call are basic signs of respect. They affect how people experience the working day and what they believe the company thinks they are worth.

Good welfare will not remove every source of stress but poor welfare adds unnecessary strain. If we want people to believe that wellbeing matters, the physical environment must support that message.

Make Support Easy to Find and Safe to Use

An Employee Assistance Programme is only useful when people know it exists, trust its confidentiality and can access it without feeling judged. Put the information in inductions, welfare areas, payslips, internal apps and site briefings. Repeat it often. Avoid hiding support behind a chain of approvals or a difficult process.

Onward Shift offers support for individuals through services including coaching and counselling, as well as practical support for construction companies that want to build a healthier workplace culture.

Protect Time Away From Work

Burnout grows when people never properly switch off. Encourage workers to use annual leave, protect rest breaks and avoid treating constant overtime as proof of commitment. Where the work allows it, consider flexible arrangements and smarter shift patterns. Even modest changes can give people space to recover and reconnect with life outside work.

Rest is part of safe performance. Nobody would run a machine continuously without maintenance and expect it to remain reliable. Human beings need recovery too.

Culture Changes One Honest Conversation at a Time

Policies matter but people watch behaviour. They notice what happens when a colleague speaks honestly. They notice whether a manager makes time, whether confidentiality is respected and whether the person is treated differently afterwards.

Culture begins to shift when a site manager can say they have been to therapy, when a subcontractor takes time away for their mental health and returns with support and when a business can explain clearly how it helps people rather than simply saying that it cares.

One ground worker described the effect a single conversation had:

“Talking to someone saved my life. No one at work knew I was struggling. When I finally spoke up, I realised I wasn’t alone and it gave others the courage to do the same.”

— Ground worker, London

That is the power of openness. One person speaks, another recognises themselves in the story and the silence starts to loosen. It does not require anybody to share more than they are comfortable sharing. It requires us to create an environment where honesty is met with care.

We Cannot Wait for the 2030 Report

We cannot allow another five years to pass and then look back at another set of worsening figures. The people represented in this data are working on our sites and projects today.

If you work in HR, operations, project management or on the tools, you have influence. You can check in with someone, challenge an unsafe workload, improve a briefing or make support easier to find. If you lead a business, set policy, plan programmes or shape industry standards, you carry even greater responsibility because your decisions create the conditions other people work within.

Construction already knows how to respond to risk. We investigate, plan, train, communicate and improve. We need to bring the same seriousness to mental health.

Share this article with your team. Use it to begin a toolbox talk. Ask what is creating the most pressure in your workplace and listen closely to the answer. Choose one practical action and follow it through.

We build strong structures by paying attention to their foundations. The same is true of people. Mental health must become part of how construction plans work, leads teams and measures success every day.

Nobody in this industry should feel that disappearing is easier than asking for help. Let’s build a culture where people can speak before they reach crisis, where support is visible and where going home safely includes what is happening inside the hard hat.