Bromsgrove man 'emotional' after finishing 5k a day in May to highlight stigmas surrounding mental health
Joe Baker was doing the challenge after 7,000 construction workers have taken their own life in the past decade
A Bromsgrove man says he will continue to do everything he can to make sure stigmas around mental health are addressed after completing a running challenge.
Tradesman Joe Baker ran 5K a day in May to highlight 7,000 construction workers have taken their own life in the past decade.
The figures come from The Lost City, a campaign aiming to show the impact mental health has had on those working in construction, which estimates in that period, those workers could have built 150,000 homes, 80 schools and 3 hospitals.
38-year-old Joe says he was overcome with emotions when he finished his last run and hopes what he has done has had an impact.
He said: “When I finished the challenge I felt a little bit emotional, I thought I was going to be feel a big weight of relief off my shoulders for not having to run the next day but I felt emotional that it was all coming to an end because I’ve enjoyed the runs, minus the pain.
“All the support I received throughout the run spurred me on just to keep going and keep running when I was in pain, when I didn’t really want to go out, when I wasn’t motivated.
“This is just a ripple and this ripple hopefully going to turn into a wave, then slowly but surely it will become more noticed, more heard, and hopefully then the statistics of suicide in construction workers will drop and decrease.”
Research from On The Tools published in their Behind the High-Vis: A Mental Health White Paper in May 2023 said just over a quarter (26%) of tradespeople are more likely than workers in other industries to experience mental ill health in the UK.
Other data also revealed more than 8 in 10 (84%) people who worked on their own in the industry experienced mental ill health.
Joe says he will keep on raising awareness of the topic and the challenge won’t be his last.
“Whether I jump on a bike instead of running next time maybe, triathlons or so many half marathons in a year or something like that but they’ll definitely be another challenge from me,” he said.
“I will just continue to do everything that I’m doing at the moment, constantly talking about it on social media platforms, constantly talking about it to people I meet every day.
“If we can make people aware of how and why these things are happening, I do believe we can try and decrease these numbers.”