OPINION PIECE 19
Mental health in the trades
By
Christopher-Jon Coetzee
Look around any site or workshop today and you will see an incredible amount of grit.
You will see people lifting concrete, bending pipe, solving complex structural problems under tight deadlines, and pushing through physical exhaustion to get the job done. We pride ourselves on being tough. We wear our calluses like badges of honour, and we have built a whole culture around the idea that whatever the job throws at us, we can take it.
But if we are being completely honest with each other, we have a massive, invisible structural defect in our industry. The very same‘ macho’ persona that makes us good at pushing through physical barriers is the exact thing that is destroying us from the inside out. For generations, the unwritten site rule has been simple – you suck it up, you leave your problems at the gate, and you keep a brave face on. We treat vulnerability like it is a safety hazard, a sign that a man is cracking under the weight.
Overcoming this mental health stigma is the hardest job we will ever take on. It is much easier to fix a burst water main or re-wire a distribution board than it is to look a friend in the eye and say, ' I am completely drowning here.' Trust me, I know! And it is because we are conditioned to believe that asking for help makes us less man, we stay silent. We bottle up the financial anxiety, the relationship breakdowns, and the heavy fog of depression until the pressure inside our systems reaches an absolute breaking point. Silence isn ' t tough, silence is a defective tool that is costing lives on our sites every single week.
The face of our industry is also changing, and it is about time. Women are entering the trades, pulling on their boots, picking up the tools, and fighting hard for their rightful place on the site. But we need to talk about the unique mental load they are carrying. Not only do they face the standard, brutal pressures of the trade, but they also have to fight twice as hard just to be taken seriously in a male-dominated environment. They are constantly under the microscope, carrying the added pressure of proving they belong. When we talk about breaking the silence, we are talking about creating an environment where everyone on site, regardless of gender, feels safe enough to drop the persona and ask for backup when their tank is empty. True strength isn ' t about maintaining an old boys ' club, it is about standing shoulder to shoulder as professionals and protecting each other.
Lately, my own journey in this fight took me off the site and into a completely different kind of training. I recently completed my mindfulness teacher training. I know how that word sounds to a guy in the trades – it sounds soft, it sounds like something that doesn ' t belong in a dirty workshop. But let me clear the static on that right now. Mindfulness isn ' t about sitting cross-legged and lighting incense, it is high-performance maintenance for your nervous system. It is a practical, physical manual override.
When you are stressed, your body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, keeping your brain locked in a fight or flight panic loop. Mindfulness training taught me how to hit the emergency brake. Using tools like the 4-5-6 anchor breath isn ' t a soft exercise, it is a technical tool to lower your heart rate, clear the mental noise, and bring your system back to the green zone so you can make logical decisions instead of blowing a gasket. I didn ' t do this training to leave the trade, I did it to bring a brand-new toolkit back to the people who need it most.
As one the founders of F. I. T Friends in Trades, my opinion is simple: we need a complete overhaul of our safety standards. We wouldn ' t let a friend climb a scaffold without a harness, so why do we let them walk around site with a mind full of self-harm thoughts without offering a lifeline?
We need to stop pretending that being tough means suffering in isolation. True courage is dropping the fake brave face, standing up in front of your friends, and admitting that you are stuck in a dark hole. It takes raw guts to ask for help, and it takes real professionalism to hold space for a friend who is struggling. Let ' s upgrade our communication, let ' s back our women in trades, and let ' s start using the tools of mindfulness to protect our minds the same way we protect our bodies.
Your life is worth the blueprint. Let ' s stop driving on flat tires, break the heavy silence, and find our anchors together. PA
“ Mindfulness isn ' t about sitting cross-legged and lighting incense, it is high-performance maintenance for your nervous system – it is a practical, physical manual override.”
Christopher-Jon Coetzee, OHSS Consulting and cofounder of Friends In Trades( F. I. T.).
Supplied by Chris Coetzee
October 2026 Volume 32 I Number 08 www. plumbingafrica. co. za