Constructing a definition of distress

August 2023 is Tradies National Health Month. In support of this, Adjunct Associate Professor Carla Meurk, from the UQ School of Public Health, explores mental health in the construction industry.

What is distress? It may seem like a simple question, but surprisingly finding an answer isn’t easy.

Distress has become a common term used in policy language. The World Health Organization’s Live Life guide, which is an implementation guide for suicide prevention, frequently refers to the ‘experience’ of distress and risk of suicide. Closer to home, the National Suicide Prevention Advisor references distress in the context of suicidal distress and lists a range of factors that may influence distress. The word distress is also increasingly being used in the provision of health services. Yet, it is a word that is being used without any clear definition of what it means. We discovered this during a collaborative research project with MATES in Construction Queensland and Northern Territory - a Suicide Prevention support program.

My research team initially wanted to understand responses to distress in the construction industry and learn more about how distress is articulated to agencies outside of the mainstream health sector. We also wanted to identify opportunities to improve pathways to suitable services. However, we first needed to define what we meant by distress, and we couldn’t. Even dictionary definitions did not resonate with what we conceived distress to be.

So, we embarked on an initiative to define what distress means for individuals in the construction industry. We proposed and tested a definition of distress as: “An emotional state in which individuals feel that they are not in control, overwhelmed, or are unable to cope.”

The interesting thing about this definition is that it describes distress as a state of being that is in response to a situation or environment, instead of an intrinsic state of being. In simple terms, a person’s environment heavily influences their sense of wellbeing or distress.

So, how can we create psychologically safe environments? The first we can do is flip the script. A lot of time is spent discussing help-seeking, barriers to help-seeking and enablers to help-seeking etcetera. While this is important, one of the ways that MATES in Construction have flipped the script is by emphasizing the importance help-offering. This means reaching out to your mates who may be doing it tough and offering support. This approach changes the narrative on distress and highlights the responsibility of every community and workplace to ensure that people receive help and feel cared for. This also lessens the burden of individual responsibility to find one’s own support during moments when a person may be feeling overwhelmed, out of control or unable to cope.

Some of the other themes our research identified that can help enable psychologically safe environments, included the significance of trust and privacy – i.e., being confident that your secrets won’t be spread around the work site, and the importance of ‘knowing your mate’.

The way people demonstrate distress is varied and often not explicit: where one person may respond to distress by becoming aggressive and short-tempered, another may become quiet and withdrawn; some may even become uncharacteristically gregarious. In other words, the way to pick up on signals that a friend or loved one is in distress is not about understanding a checklist of signs or symptoms but requires a background relationship and connection that allows you to know if something has changed or maybe amiss.

Finally, it’s important to note that our definition of distress was developed through consultation with individuals in an industry that remains predominately male. It is unclear whether, or how, our definition might apply to other genders, industries or cultural backgrounds; there is always more research to do.

The MATES in Construction proactive outreach model is now being used by several major industries across Australia and New Zealand to foster awareness, connection and support. Find out more about MATES help-offering to people in distress.

Access a summary of our construction industry consultation breakfast.  

View the preliminary findings of our study: Understanding and enhancing responses to distress in the construction industry.  

Associate Professor Carla Meurk is a Principal Researcher at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and an Adjunct Associate Professor with UQs School of Public Health.