We’d rather hear about the battles than learn you lost a war

By Emma Peterson. 

Roofing professionals share insight into the importance of mental health awareness and care in the industry.  

If you didn’t know, May was mental health awareness month in the United States! Mental health is a key issue in our industry, with construction having the second-highest suicide rate of all major industries in the U.S. To talk about how the industry is working on addressing this issue, Lynsey Hull of Tyelus, McKay Daniels of National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) and Joel Stanley of Anchor Products came by for an episode of Roofing Road Trips®. 

The mental health movement in the roofing industry has been steadily growing over the years as people get more informed about the severity of the issue. A huge moment in that timeline came in 2024 when NRCA launched a microsite about connecting professionals to resources. McKay spoke about the page, sharing, “Knowing a place to start is half the battle, so we made BeToughEnough.org with the goal of providing some basic level resources, a place for both employers and employees to learn how to talk about mental health. And it has the NRCA logo on it, but it’s not about NRCA, it’s bigger than just one organization.” 

And in the years since that page launched, the movement has truly grown far beyond just the actions of one organization. For example, in 2026 the Single Ply Roofing Industry (SPRI) association announced a mental health task force, partially inspired by NRCA’s work. Joel shared the story:  

A couple of years ago, McKay  was speaking and he talked about how our industry focuses so much on physical safety. Which makes sense, we suffer from about 400 or so fall deaths a year... But he also pointed out that we’re forgetting the mental side of things. And those numbers are so much bigger; I think he said we suffer from over 6,000 deaths a year from suicide. And it really hit me, I have a family member who has struggled with mental health and it got me thinking.  

What was Joel thinking about? He realized that organizations like NRCA are great for general awareness, but they don’t have the personnel to be on jobsites all over the country, seeing people day-in and day-out and being able to notice when someone is struggling. Who has that presence? Roofing manufacturers. He explained, “Manufacturers have people on job sites every day that are inspecting and advising. Those people see contractors periodically throughout the year and I realized when you see people frequently, but not every day, it allows you to see and recognize changes in them. If we can equip those people with skills and resources, it could a do a lot of good.” 

Armed with this realization, Joel reached out to both McKay at the NRCA and the SPRI board to see if they could build a collaboration that could take his idea and put it into action. The result was the creation of the SPRI mental health task force.  

Lynsey was there when Joel presented his idea and immediately jumped on board to help co-chair the task force with Joel. He recalled:  

The response was really overwhelming. Our first meeting as a task force was standing room only. I've had people reach out who don't even attend SPRI and say, ‘Hey, our representative told me about this. I really want to be involved. I have some background in this or I'd like to contribute or we had this idea. What do you guys think about that?’”  

The first thing the task force worked on was collaborating with NRCA to raise awareness of the resources available on BeToughEnough.org. Lynsey explained why this was their first move, sharing, “What we're really trying to avoid is having multiple messages out there and splitting the focus. So we started by just finding ways to raise awareness and point people to NRCA’s existing resource library.”  

From there they started to collect and share stories of how people can speak up or reach out and make a difference on their job sites. Stories like the one Lynsey shared:  

Speaking up or reaching out doesn’t have to be big. I wear t-shirts from a brand that has different messages on the back. And I remember one day I was just walking my dog and a guy came up to me and grabbed my shoulder and just said, ‘I needed that today, I just wanted to say thank you,’ in reference to my shirt. And he left. When I got home I looked at the shirt and it read ‘I'd rather hear about your battles than learn you lost the war.’ And that just struck me, how just something so simple for me, wearing that shirt, meant so much. 

And at the end of the day, it’s interactions like the one in Lysney’s story that will help change mental health in our industry for the better. As McKay put it, “This effort is beyond any one organization and working together to divide the rocks that are in this pack so that we all carry a little bit is critical and key. Because while what we each do might seem like only a little on its own, if we’re all doing it we will move that ball downfield, bit by bit.”  

Want to learn more about mental health and roofing? Listen to the whole episode or Watch the recording of the podcast.