Month: April 2023

With ICBA Wellness entering its third year, we have kept a close eye on the demand for mental health help. Study after study – and story after story – has shown the desperate need for more counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, funding, hospital beds, and treatment options.

Our Wellness ambassador Corey Hirsch – about as unpolitical guy as you’ll ever meet – has co-authored newspaper op-eds with ICBA President Chris Gardner, beseeching government to invest more in mental health.

But we’re falling further and further behind.

CBC looks at this shortage in a story HERE – and it’s bleak.

We’re doing all we can as an association and benefits provider – ICBA Wellness is offered free of charge to our clients and members – but we need the healthcare system, and governments of all political stripes, to step up too with funding for the care needed by so many.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 90 companies and nearly 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

Every month, Telus Health puts out a mental health index report, and the February numbers show that the cost-of-living crisis is having a huge, and terrible, effect on many people’s mental wellness.

The Abbotsford News has some interesting analysis on the numbers, but it was this quote that resonated with me:

[UBC psychology professor Jiaying Zhao] studies the connection between scarcity – whether that’s of money, food or time – and mental well-being, and says there are very clear connections between poverty or financial stress and depression and anxiety.

“Poverty taxes the brain. It puts a huge mental burden on people.”

That burden eats up bandwidth and makes it more difficult for people to perform in school or at work, Zhao says. Short-term, it’s exhausting and stressful. Long-term, it can lead to mental illness.

ICBA Wellness dedicates a full month of our programming to fiscal fitness, offering tips, ideas and solutions to manage the mental wear and tear of dealing with money.

As cost-of-living continues to go up, this will need to be a bigger focus for all of us.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 90 companies and nearly 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

CALGARY – ICBA Alberta has released the inaugural edition of the Alberta Construction Monitor, a new, quarterly publication providing ahead-of-the-curve information and statistics on the Alberta construction industry and the issues relevant to it.

In the spring edition, statistics show that 1 of every 10 jobs in Alberta is in construction, and the industry contributes 8% of Alberta’s GDP. We also see that 88% of the industry is ‘open-shop’ – not affiliated with a traditional building trades union. ICBA Alberta is proud to advocate for this open shop majority of Alberta’s construction sector.

The Monitor also looks at wages, activity, and other important demographics.

To read the inaugural Alberta Construction Monitor, click HERE. To visit ICBA Alberta’s website, click HERE.

The world’s top athletes continue to work to break the stigma around mental health. This week, it was NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, a two-time league MVP who led the Bucks to the NBA championship in 2021.

But a year before winning the title, Giannis considered retirement. As he told his local paper, he felt incredible pressure – and anxiety – over being watched everywhere he went:

“I feel like a lot of people deal with it, but they’re not willing to talk about it. They’re not willing to improve, because this stigma is behind it. ‘You talk about it, then you’re soft, you’re weak; this is a sport, you’ve got to be tough. You’ve got to fight through everything.’”

Finally, he opened up to his family, and to a professional therapist:

“Somebody helped put me in a place, again, to appreciate all of the things that I have, that comes with being who I am. To be OK with myself. To — no matter what the outcome is of the game — understand that I can’t control that. I can only control my effort. How hard I work. How I make people feel around me. How I try to, hopefully, inspire people from what I do.”

Outward success is no guarantee of perfect mental health. Everyone – even two-time NBA MVPs – can need help.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 90 companies and nearly 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

Tonight, nearly a thousand people will gather in Vancouver for the ICBA Gala, to celebrate B.C. construction and to hear guest speakers Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.

One of the themes we will discuss with Terry is mental health. Obviously, this has been a focus of ICBA’s for more than two years now, and Terry’s work to break down the stigma around mental health has been admirable.

In 1999, he was diagnosed with depression, and he reached out to a pastor for help. “It’s hard for me to put into words the horrific feeling of being depressed. It is the most sickening feeling in the world when you believe you are miserable and you’re all alone. I was drinking a lot, and I didn’t like the path I was on. I was frightened by what might happen. I wasn’t sure if I was going to drink myself to death.”

By asking for help, Terry started a process of accountability, and psychological and medical intervention. Today, medication and self-care have turned his life around: “When you’re clinically depressed the serotonin in your brain is out of balance and probably always will be out of balance. So I take medication to get that proper balance back. I’ll probably have to be on it the rest of my life.”

We can’t say enough about Terry’s willingness to open up – he’s an inspiration to all of us.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 90 companies and nearly 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.