Alberta’s oil patch workers are suffering mentally at a disproportionately high rate, and a new CBC documentary Digging in the Dirt unearth’s why.
A combination of isolation, instability in the market, long hours and a ‘very hyper masculine environment’ all contribute to higher suicide rates among oil patch workers, Omar Mouallem, co-producer of the film, told The Homestretch on Monday.
“You have a very hyper masculine environment where it is difficult to say the least to be vulnerable to express your emotions to ask for help and not asking for help is the thing that is leading so many men to take their own lives,” said Mouallem.
Throughout the documentary, Mouallem and co-producer Dylan Rhys Howard, allow three men employed in the oil patch tell their own harrowing stories of mental health and with expert weigh-in, then talk about what solutions could look like.
The current landscape
“We all know the stereotype right, the young uneducated single man living with reckless abandon…that is a trope,” said Mouallem.
“Anyone who’s been in a camp will tell you it’s one of the most ethnically diverse places you can be there. There are people from all walks of life.”
“The only true stereotype is it’s an overwhelmingly male workforce,” said Mouallem.
The majority of people employed in the oil patch are men, a mere 7.1 per cent of women in Alberta were reported to be in the trades and trades related industries by the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey.
However, beyond gender, generalizing these employees is hard, as there are a wide range of ages, educational backgrounds and ethnicities represented on the patch.
And while records are no longer kept in Alberta on the occupations of victims of suicide, Mouallem says older studies indicated occupations in industry and trades has the highest rate of suicide.
According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, Alberta suicide deaths rose during the years of the economic downturn.
Surprising Findings
Contrary to a widely held belief, oil patch employees mental health has not only been negatively affected by the economic downturn in 2015-2016, but is an ongoing struggle that has been happening “for a long time.”
“What surprised me is when I talk to mental health experts, to mental health nurses, crisis intervention experts they said…we are certainly seeing more people who feel despair because they’ve lost their jobs or they can’t keep up finances but this has been going on for a long time,” Mouallem.
In fact, while making the documentary oil path employees told Mouallem that their mental health worsened during the oil boom because there was so much work to be done quickly, and, “behaviour became reckless for a lot of people.”
One interviewee in the documentary, Chris Johnson, an Edmonton crane operator, shared that the economic downturn actually fallowed him time to look after his mental health.
To the future
Mouallem believes the ‘biggest obstacle’ these men face is, “men just don’t really like asking for help.”
“It’s hard to be vulnerable when you’re surrounded by that environment.”
He has been writing about men’s mental health for years, and joined forces with his filmmaker and co-producer knowing it was an important story to tell and re-tell.
The Alberta premier of Digging in the Dirt takes place this Friday on CBC T.V. at 7 p.m. or on CBC Gem. Digging in the Dirt is part of the CBC series Absolutely Canadian.