Ep.25 - Awareness Isn’t Enough

64% of US construction workers reported anxiety or depression in the last twelve months, up from 54% the year before. For Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Angelo brings Josh Vitale of Project BUILT back to the show to talk about the part nobody has gotten to yet: what you actually do once you have admitted there is a problem.

Josh explains why running six thousand people through crisis intervention training was not the answer, what the trainings gave him and what they never gave him, and how that pushed him into building things instead. Family retreats. Recharge rooms already in use in police and fire halls. Rebar, a free anonymous check-in app that keeps a worker’s data on their own phone.

Underneath all of it is a single design principle: the intervention cannot stop when the time clock gets punched. This is a solutions episode, and it ends with a direct answer to the question a lot of wellness committees are sitting on right now, which is what to do with a budget you do not know how to spend.

Key topics covered

• Why awareness fatigue is real, and why awareness is still not finished

• What crisis intervention training gives you, and the one thing it cannot give you

• The 2025 stigma numbers, from both the worker and the executive side

• Doing your own work first, and the hero complex that comes with this territory

• Whole people, not workers: why interventions that stop at the gate do not hold

• Building the family retreat, and the model it was borrowed from

• Recharge rooms: what is in them, what they cost, and where the results come from

• The cost objection, and the cost of inaction

• Rebar, Level Check, and Compass: free tools for the worker and the spouse

• Why peer credibility beats a credential in this industry

• What Josh would do with a $250,000 wellness budget

Guest bio

Josh Vitale is the founder of Project BUILT, a construction wellbeing nonprofit built on the idea that the intervention cannot stop when the time clock gets punched. Project BUILT runs all expenses paid family retreats for construction families, is bringing recharge rooms from police and fire stations onto job sites, and recently launched Rebar, a free anonymous check-in web app for workers and their spouses in English, Spanish and Arabic. Josh is a builder first. He has sat in dozens of suicide interventions, has been through his own recovery, and is now MasTec’s preferred charity partner. He first appeared on the show in Episode 7.

Mentioned in this episode

• Project BUILT and the all expenses paid family retreat in Pagosa Springs, applications open: https://getbuilt.org

• Rebar, free and anonymous, English, Spanish and Arabic: https://rebar.getbuilt.org

• Clayco / Atomik Research 2025 construction mental health survey, the study cited at 13:36

• CAMH: one in two Canadians will have had a mental illness by the age of 40 (Smetanin et al. 2011)

• Project Sanctuary, the military family retreat model Project BUILT was built from

• QPR, Vital Cog and Mental Health First Aid, the training programs discussed

• Ed DeAngelis, EDA Contractors, and the accountability program mentioned at 1:07:45 (HSOC Episode 9)

• Confide, Project BUILT’s peer support partner

• Josh Vitale’s first appearance, HSOC Episode 7

Support

If you are struggling, or worried about someone: call or text 988 in the US and Canada. In the US, 988lifeline.org. In Canada, 988.ca.