MATES is an independent construction industry charity established in 2007 in response to construction workforce rates of suicide in Australia. The charity is led by a multimodal programme based on four principles: raising awareness among workers; building resilience in the workplace; connecting workers to help and support through help offering; and utilising independent research partners to support and participate in a growing evidence and research base around suicide and mental health. In 2018 MATES expanded to the Northern Territory (NT) and has trained over 3800 construction workers in General Awareness about mental health and suicide prevention (GAT), 500 workers in ‘Connector’ training to help keep someone safe in a crisis and over 60 workers in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST). This session will provide an overview of research designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Mates program in the NT context using data collected from participants engaged in the training programs.
Psychosocial Hazards in the Northern Territory Building and Construction Industry
The first phase of the evaluation involved comparing construction worker reports of psychosocial hazards in the NT (330 responses) with responses (770) from workers in the broader Australian building and construction industry. A context specific version of the People at Work Survey was used (Loudoun et al., 2024) to measure psychosocial hazards. Results indicated supervisor task conflict for NT workers was more concerning, at 10.9% higher than the broader Australian cohort (Thompson et al, 2024, Thompson & Doran, 2025).
MATES site accreditation across the Northern Territory
MATES workplace program uses a model with sites where 80% of site workers undertake General Awareness Training, 20% of site workers undertake Connector training and at least one ASIST trained worker is on site. Using a mixed methods approach to evaluate the benefit of accreditation, three sites of 80 workers were surveyed using tested and valid scales in stigma reduction, help seeking, help offering, suicide ideation, mental health awareness and self-efficacy sites were surveyed at intervals of three months to see effectiveness of the accreditation program. At three-month intervals a site with no training, a site with General Awareness only and a site fully accredited were compared.
This workshop with unpack the results of both studies to demonstrate the unique factors that influence mental health and suicide in the NT building industry and will detail how worker voice combines with evidence-based research to create workplace change.