JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — An innovation may offer relief for one of the construction industry’s most urgent and underreported crises: suicide and chronic mental health stress.
Construction professionals face one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation, five times more likely to die by suicide than in a job-site accident, according to the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR). Despite the alarming numbers, mental health remains a largely unspoken issue on site.
Haskell’s innovation lab, Dysruptek, is trying to change that with a first-of-its-kind prototype called StillGuard — a sensory therapy pod built specifically for construction workers to take short, immersive mental health breaks.
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Approximately 6,000 U.S. construction workers died by suicide in 2022. Another 1,000 died from on-the-job injuries the following year. Yet mental wellness remains under-addressed on most sites.
“The mental health epidemic is really hitting the construction industry, but nobody wants to talk about it,” said Hamzah Shanbari, Haskell’s Director of Innovation. “Nobody wants to highlight that issue… because there is no readily off-the-shelf solution to help solve that problem.”
The StillGuard pod aims to be part of that solution.
“The people in the construction site… they are in a very harsh environment,” Shanbari explained. “They are in the sun. They are in the heat and dust.”
Inside the pod, workers can select between three modes: repair, reset, and recharge. Each one delivers a combination of full-body vibration, ambient lighting, and calming visuals.
“Something I have never done before, that’s for sure,” said construction worker Hunter Rhoden after trying the pod.
Other workers echoed that sentiment.
“It’s an experience for sure,” said Jared Jraveor.
“You don’t have time to think about something going on at work,” Rhoden added. “You’re just looking at all the lights and colors and feeling all the sound…”
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Sound engineer Jeremy Nix, part of the creative team Memory is a Game with Zaiche Johnson, helped develop the pod’s sensory programming.
“We have programmed initially three different programs of both sound and visuals,” Nix said, which include pain relief, stress relief, and mood uplift.
The pod is currently being prepped for its public debut at Procore Groundbreak in Houston — a major construction industry conference — where the team hopes to gather feedback. The goal is to roll out the final version to construction sites later this month.
“That’s when we’re gonna ship that unit to an actual job site in Mississippi,” Shanbari said.
The pod is intentionally designed to fit seamlessly into everyday jobsite life.
“So that will be right next to a Porter party — where you can have your bio break, but then you can also go take a mental break,” Shanbari explained.
While this is only a prototype, Shanbari says the team plans to refine the design after the Houston conference and ship the improved model to a construction company in Jackson, Mississippi.
Contributors to the StillGuard project include:
- Hamzah Shanbari – Director of Innovation, Haskell/Dysruptek
- Jeremy Nix & Zaiche Johnson – Memory is a Game
- Kedgar Volta – Founder, Castano Group
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