The industry has spent a decade building out suicide prevention. Toolbox talks, helpline cards, awareness weeks. John Gaal Sr. argues that leaves a hole exactly where the work is hardest, in the hours and days after a worker dies, and that most firms have nothing written down for it.
Gaal is director of worker wellness at the Missouri Works Initiative. He lost his own son. He started fielding crisis calls in September 2021 and took eight more in a single twelve-week stretch, with dozens since, including one the night before he sat down with Construction Dive.
“Every one of those calls said, ‘John, I’m in the eye of the storm. What the hell do I do right now?'”
A four-part postvention protocol
His acute-phase framework has four pieces.
Coordination. A designated team of three or four people, named before anything happens, with one of them trained to handle media under the journalistic protocols that govern suicide reporting.
Notification. Family permission before any information is shared. No detail on method. The phrase is “died by suicide,” not “committed suicide.” Gaal is firm on that one: “We don’t say ‘committed suicide.'”
Communication. An all-hands within the first few hours. The purpose is to stop rumour from filling the gap, which matters because contagion risk on a crew is real and rumour feeds it.
Support. Group response first, then individual follow-up, because the two do different jobs and neither substitutes for the other.
The number that sets the scale
University of Kentucky work from 2018 found that one death affects roughly 135 people. Gaal’s point is what that does to a small firm’s arithmetic: a 150-person company doesn’t need one response, it needs 150. That figure and the 40-to-1 research ratio are both his characterisations of the literature rather than independently verified counts, and the call volumes are self-reported. He’s published his postvention research in the International Journal of Vocational Education and Training.
Why nobody has written this down
Prevention is easier to programme. It has a schedule, a deliverable and an awareness week. Postvention has none of those things, gets activated on the worst day a jobsite will ever have, and requires decisions about family, media and a crew of 40 people inside a few hours. So it doesn’t get written, and then it gets improvised.
“People are thirsting for this,” Gaal said. “They need a protocol.”
The practical takeaway for a safety director is small and unglamorous: name the three or four people now, decide who talks to media, and agree the language before you need it. That’s an afternoon of work that costs nothing, and it’s the difference between a protocol and a phone call at midnight asking what to do.
This article discusses a sensitive subject. In the U.S., the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text. If you or someone on your crew needs support, help is available.