A ‘call for action’ on suicide and the workplace published in the journal Crisis in 2026 warns that between 10 and 13 per cent of all suicides worldwide are caused or exacerbated by exposures at work – amounting to at least 70,000 suicides globally each year.

The work suicide experts, from universities and suicide prevention organisations in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong, note: “While suicide research has focused predominantly on unemployment as a risk factor for suicide, in recent years, a growing number of studies has generated evidence of the ways in which work or working conditions can exacerbate suicide or suicidality.”

Identifying a regulatory ‘blind spot’ on work-related suicide, they note it can be a “complex and multifactorial phenomenon” but “where work or working conditions play a role in generating or exacerbating suicidality, we believe that it is crucial to address those factors.”

While in the UK, regulatory oversight and legal action by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) against companies and their bosses for their role in suicide causation is non-existent (Hazards 163), the same isn’t true elsewhere.

And, the Crisis paper notes, this action can have a salutary effect on employers. It cites a union campaign in France that led to jail terms for company directors whose actions were linked directly to large numbers of work-related suicides.

SUICIDE STUDY  Academics are seeking help to complete an in-depth analysis of work-related suicides in the UK. The study is part of a Wellcome Trust-funded research project, Work-related suicide. An international social justice analysis. more

Solidaires’ action, together with other unions, exposed the culpability of France Telecom’s top bosses in 19 workers suicides and 12 attempted suicides between 2007 and 2010. The real number of suicide deaths is believed to be substantial higher.

The suicides came after the company embarked on a restructuring project intended to drive workers out.

Didier Lombard, the former president and chief executive of the telecommunications giant, rebranded Orange in 2013, was jailed on 20 December 2019 for a year. Two other top executives also received jail terms. The company was fined €75,000. In September 2022, the sentences were upheld in the Paris Court of Appeal.

Lombard, human resources director Olivier Barberot and deputy executive director Louis-Pierre Wenes were accused in court of having “degraded work conditions of personnel that risked hurting their rights and dignity, altering the physical or mental health (of personnel), or compromising their professional future.”

A 2023 paper in the Journal of Public Mental Health notes this regulatory attention had a chastening effect on employers. “A legal framework that is more protective of the mental health of employees” has been successful with “legal action against large companies including France Telecom, La Poste and Renault, and this, in turn, has led to significant improvements in workplace safety in France,” it notes, adding supermarket multinational Lidl has also found itself before the French courts.

In Japan, advertising giant Dentsu Inc has been under close scrutiny by labour inspectors since a 2015 suicide linked to excessive overtime. A labour inspectorate investigation saw the ad agency fined in 2017 and prompted the resignation of Tadashi Ishii, Dentsu’s then president and chief executive.

Dentsu announced a reform plan in July 2017, pledging to cut overall working hours per person by 20 per cent. The company was targeted again by the inspectorate in 2019, for failing to honour this pledge.

Some of the harm stems from a deeper malaise afflicting the labour market – a casualisation of work that has seen the creation of armies of contingent workers, with low pay, low job quality and little or no employment security.

A 2025 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology and tracking 2.8 million Canadians found that people in precarious jobs face a two to three times higher risk of dying from suicide, drug poisoning or alcohol-related causes – sometimes referred to as ‘diseases of distress’ or ‘diseases of despair’ – than those in stable, well-paid work.

Women in insecure jobs were especially vulnerable, with triple the risk of fatal overdoses compared to women in standard jobs. The study concluded declining job quality fuels despair, highlighting the need for fair pay, stability and security in work.

Some of the health impacts of work-derived pressures may be misattributed to personal habits and behaviour, like smoking or substance misuse, when these are slamdunk symptoms of a toxic work environment. Bad jobs breed a cluster of bad outcomes for workers.

A 2021 paper published in the Annals of Work Exposures and Health found: “Workers in occupations with higher injury and illnesses rates and more job insecurity had higher rates of deaths of despair, especially opioid-related deaths.

PEER TO PEER Two construction union members role play, during a peer-supporter training in Long Island City, New York, in a project to address mental health problems in the industry. more

“Rates of deaths of despair increased most rapidly for occupations with increasing prevalence of workers employed in non-standard work arrangements.” It concluded “efforts should be made to address these factors, which also represent known or suspected hazards for other adverse health outcomes.”

Occupational health specialists from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, reviewing evidence from a Princeton University studies from 2015 and 2017 of a sharp spike in death rates among white working class American males, found job insecurity, discrimination and a lack of control at work was behind an increase in alcohol and drug-related diseases and suicides.

Companies though are sometimes quicker to resort to punitive drug and alcohol testing programmes than any consideration of the psychosocial risks posed by the job itself. It is a blame the worker, break the worker system where risks go unaddressed.

The authors of the Call to Action, who in 2025 penned an open letter calling for work suicide prevention, have spelled out practical first steps to remedy the workplace suicide crisis.

“Our Open Letter was drafted by a taskforce of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) Workplace Special Interest Group that has called for greater social, legal recognition and prevention of work-related suicide.” This calls for five actions from governments:

1. Define work-related suicide
2. Identify and investigate potential work-related suicides  
3. Record and monitor work-related suicides
4. Regulate and control work-related risk factors for suicide workplace health and safety issues  
5. Compensate work-related suicides as other work-related injuries and fatalities.  

“Suicides are preventable, and with effective policy frameworks, work-related suicides can be prevented. The above actions are urgent and achievable: several countries have already implemented some or all of these actions and we call on other countries to follow suit,” they state.

The Crisis authors conclude “continuing to turn a blind eye to work-related suicides, to exclude them from social and legal recognition, to fail to report or investigate them, means that despite available evidence, we will continue to allow preventable suicide to occur.

“There are explicit criteria in place for identifying potential work-related suicides that could be adopted immediately by all national regulators as a first step in transforming work-related suicide into an actionable terrain for policy intervention and prevention.”

HSE in November 2025 reported levels of work-related stress, anxiety and depression in Great Britain are at a record high (see: HSE is broke).

HSE might want to consider whether its intransigence is a deadly mistake.

• Waters S, Gullestrup J, LaMontagne AD, King T, Thomas SS, Genest C, Castelli Dransart DA, Shan Lai CC. Suicide and the Workplace - A Call for Action. Crisis. 2026 Jan;47(1):1-8. doi: 10.1027/0227-5910/a001040.

Work-related suicide study seeks help

Academics are seeking help to complete an in-depth analysis of work-related suicides in the UK. The study is part of a Wellcome Trust-funded research project, Work-related suicide. An international social justice analysis.

The researchers say: “Do you know or have you supported anyone who is bereaved by suicide in relation to work? Or feels suicidal in relation to work?  

“We are gathering information on deaths by suicide related to work in the UK that occurred between 2018 and 2023. If you know of examples that we could include in our study, please get in touch with us.”

They say the purpose of this study is to analyse the diverse causes and contexts of work-related suicides – grounded in urgent issues of recognition, justice and accountability for suicidal individuals and their families.

“As a team, we have a lot of experience working with people who are suicidal and/or who have been bereaved by suicide, and are holding this whole process with confidentiality and deep care.

“If you’re interested to learn more or have information you’d like to share, then we’d love to connect. Please get in touch via email on emily@healingjusticeldn.org".

Union peer-to-peer support reduces overdoses and suicides

A fall in the overdose and suicide rate in construction “is encouraging because it demonstrates that our prevention efforts are making a difference,” US union safety advocates have said.

A February 2026 report from the union safety training organisation CPWR and North America Building Trade Unions (NABTU), NABTU/CPWR, which together have pioneered US union peer-support systems, notes the suicide rate in the industry fell from 43.2 to 41.9 per 100,000 workers from 2023 to 2024.

Among construction workers aged 16 to 64, drug-related overdoses deaths declined 28.8 per cent, from 15,900 in 2023 to 11,300 in 2024.

The union bodies point to actions by their peer-to-peer member support systems they believe have contributed to the decline, including ‘decreased stigma around substance use and mental health disorders’ and ‘education on risks of prescribed opioids and opioids in general’.

The construction industry has one of the highest injury rates in the US, and workers are commonly prescribed opiates to cope with injury pain. Lacking sick pay or affordable health care, many site workers need to continuing working to survive, and insurance companies approve opiates as a cheap fix that will keep them working wounded, exacerbating the injury or at best slowing and jeopardising recovery.

In New York, a programme has been co-created by the Worker Institute at Cornell University and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York (BCTC), which represents all 41 local union affiliates of all 15 international construction unions and more than 100,000 union members in the New York City metropolitan region.

The programme, the Building Trades Peer Support Network, includes a two-hour training, “It’s Not Weak to Speak.” Another component trains union members to be on-site peer supporters who listen to troubled coworkers, assess the risk of their mental health and refer them to appropriate support.

Peer-support approaches in suicide prevention with the active participation of union representatives were pioneered in Australia, with the creation in 2008 of the Mates in Construction project, subsequently expanded to cover other sectors. It became the inspiration for initiatives in the US, New Zealand and elsewhere.

• Construction Worker Deaths from Opioids Plummet, Suicides Decline, Reason newsletter, NABTU/CPWR, February 2026. www.cprw.com
• Jorgen Gullestrup, Tania King, Samantha L Thomas, Anthony D LaMontagne,. Effectiveness of the Australian MATES in Construction Suicide Prevention Program: a systematic review, Health Promotion International, volume 38, issue 4, August 2023, daad082, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daad082

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SUICIDE CRISIS

Who benefits when regulators and the courts pursue bosses whose brutal employment practices drive workers to the brink of suicide or to actually kill themselves? Well, says Hazards editor Rory O’Neill, new studies suggest we all do, as it leads to ‘significant’ and widespread safety improvements