Stress Relief

摘要

Mark had been in the construction industry for 18 years when he was made redundant from his job as a senior executive in September. But nothing in that time had prepared him for what was to follow. "As a senior executive in a major construction firm, you think you have a pretty good idea of what's going on," he says. "You don't. I was devastated. I had been in the industry since I left university, and worked my way up to a position I was proud of. I'm in my 40s, responsible for incredibly large contracts and suddenly I'm just put to one side; thrown on the scrap heap."rnThe emotional toll of redundancy soon began to take its toll on Mark's personal life, causing him to argue with his family more and more bitterly as his sense of self-worth plummeted. "I was argumentative, erratic, deflated. I was at a loss. I was stuck in a mindset of depression and a never-ending black-hole. I was in a spiral, and I was going further down."rnIn the end, Mark contacted a counsellor, and it was that decision that saved him. He pulled his life around and got a top post in another construction business. But his is one story among many. There were 48,000 redundancies in the past quarter alone, and countless more executives and workers are living in fear that they may be next. At the same time, site workers in particular are coping with the increasingly pressurised work practices of the modern industry. As a result, the problem of emotional stress is hitting the industry harder than ever before. Here we examine the scale of a problem often hidden behind construction's macho image, and look at what can be done to to stop its destructive impact.