Canberra tradies break new ground on mental health to deal with COVID trauma

Kane Constructions ACT general manager Joanne Farrell agrees discussions around mental health in the building industry have been a long time coming.

"There's been a huge shift in the industry around these conversations. It's my 25th year in the industry next year and from when I started, even five or six years ago, you wouldn't say, 'I need a mental health day'. You would be absolutely ridiculed from one end of the site to the other," she said.

"Now, that's a normal thing and it's not ridiculed and people actually start showing the respect that it needs. So it's like any other time when you're feeling unwell, when you've got the cold or flu.

"And the open and honest conversations that are happening now [around mental health] are really positive."

Ms Farrell is leading the way, helping crack open the hard shell around mental health discussions.

After recognising staff were suffering high levels of stress during the 2020 COVID lockdown, Ms Farrell engaged Mental Illness Education ACT to deliver a 12-week program of mental health education to the Kane Constructions team.

Not only that, Kane Constructions "paid it forward", financing mental health education for others in the community.

MIEACT chief executive officer Heidi Prowse said in just the last month, her organisation had been able to support Woden Community Services, Northside Community Services, CatholicCare and YWCA with mental health education thanks to the generosity of organisations who chose to pay it forward.

"Providing mental health support and education is crucial at any time of year, but it becomes particularly pertinent in lockdown when so many of us are dealing with new and challenging pressures," Ms Prowse said.

Ms Farrell said the ACT's 2020 lockdown made staff stressed and anxious about the future. They were worried about job insecurity. Some had been separated from family interstate. Many of the younger workers had suffered with the social isolation.

Everyone kept saying they "just had to make it to Christmas" and everything after that would be right. But after their break and back at work, things were no better.

"Straight away I realised people were not rested, were not relaxed. That anxiety and stress was still there and it started coming out in frustrations and different behaviours on our sites," she said.

"All the little things started to become mountains we couldn't get around. People started taking time off work, they were getting sick. We kept limping along."

Ms Farrell contacted Ms Prowse and said plainly "I think I need your help" for her troops.

"She said, 'It sounds like your team has a level of post-traumatic stress and we're finding that's happening more and more because of COVID'," Ms Farrell said.

"It was almost like because the Canberra community hadn't been affected as badly as somewhere like Victoria, we were thinking, 'Am I allowed to feel bad? Am I allowed to feel stressed'? And that was actually creating more stress."

MORE COVID-19 NEWS:

MIEACT came up with a tailored course for Kane Constructions management and workers, including trauma awareness and stress courses.

"The knowledge we learnt was just crazy," Ms Farrell said.

"From all the different levels of trauma, they could really pinpoint behaviours. We could say, 'Yes we're seeing that, we're seeing that' and we could do something about it."

They also had group sessions, including with a MIEACT volunteer who spoke about his struggles with mental health and how it affected his work and relationships.

"That was a real eye-opener for us as well," Ms Farrell said.

All this happened in April, well before lockdown No.2 started in August.

Ms Farrell said it put them in good stead, because the seal had been broken and there was talk back and forth about what was really troubling people.

There was a lot more camaraderie. A lot more understanding a greater feeling of being supported.

"I think we now have a lot more open and honest conversations," Ms Farrell said.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: