North Sea workers aged between 35 and 64 are more likely to believe accessing mental health support will negatively impact their careers, a landmark report has revealed.
A survey, answered by 1,315 workers and conducted by a range of industry bodies, assessed the impacts of life in the North Sea.
The report by Step Change in Safety, Mental Health in Energy and the Marine Safety Forum found that those in the oil and gas and logistics sectors feel less mentally healthy than other sectors.
Laura Hardie, Wellbeing Workgroup co-chair for Step Change in Safety, told Energy Voice: “There are certainly challenges in engaging with the offshore workforce and what we see is a great deal of dilution in messaging from what we’re seeing onshore to when it actually gets off into that working environment.”
© Image: BIG PartnershipRespondents to the survey answered a series of questions on a scale of 1 to 5 based on if they strongly disagree, disagree, were neutral to the statement, agreed, or strongly agreed.
Those in the age group from 35 to 64 gave an average answer of three (neutral) when asked if accessing mental health support would negatively impact their work, compared to the wider survey average of two (disagree).
The report outlined: “There was a trend toward older respondents and those who had worked the longest in the energy sector being less satisfied with their health and wellbeing and with their working conditions, which warrants further exploration.”
This comes shortly after a report from the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), which found that workers aged between 40 and 49 account for a quarter of the oil and gas workforce and that 18% were over the age of 60.
With those in the middle to late stages of their career accounting for a large proportion of the oil and gas industry’s headcount, more needs to be done to ensure that those suffering from poor mental health are supported.
Communication is key to mental health support
The report suggested that industry invests in “education and awareness campaigns” while providing “training sessions and workshops focused on the importance of mental health and the support options available,” to combat this stigma.
Simon Lee Maryan, psychologist and representative of Mental Health in Energy, commented: “This is where it comes down to communication and communicating it in different ways to engage more people.
“We’re never going to change everyone ‘s belief around taboos or the stigma around mental health and being open to accessing help when they feel they need it.
“I know quite a few people of that older generation, that’s the 60 plus, who would never open up, never talk about it, not even to their friends, probably especially not to their friends.
“So, I think until that generation moves out of the industry completely, younger generations are definitely much more open to it, so it’s striking the balance, as always, which is going to be a continuous adjustment.”
Suicidal thoughts vs suicidal ideation
Mental Health in Energy came from a 2023 report produced by the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) North Sea chapter which found 40% of offshore workers experience suicidal thoughts while on duty.
The psychologist explained that an issue with the question asked for the 2023 report was that there is a distinction between “suicidal thoughts” and “suicidal ideation”.
On this finding, Maryan added: “Suicidal thoughts are a very common thing, they come and go, they flick through your mind when you’re having a really bad time but they carry on, they don’t stay.
“Suicidal ideation is when it’s a fixated thing and you get to the point of planning, that’s when it becomes a problem.”
Where to go for mental health support
© HEMEDIARecently, industry psychologist and managing director of mental health consultancy firm IntrospeXion Shabnum Hanif explained that a “shockingly” low percentage of workers access the support offered by UK businesses.
She said that employee assistance programmes (EAPs), which aim to support employees with mental health, legal services and other benefits, are utilised by “around 4%” of UK workers.
In addition to a reluctance to access mental health support, those working offshore were less likely to know where to access mental health support than their onshore counterparts.
Hardie added: “Sessions around those support services, how to access them and the benefit of them, they’re all really tailored and well thought out but that message by the time it reaches your frontline workforce offshore can be heavily diluted, right down to just one line of ‘there are new support services available so check out the notice boards.’
“They don’t get that same level of input as we do see onshore, and so we really need to start better engage with our offshore workforce to make sure that there is that clarity in our messaging.”
The industry has to be “mindful of how we communicate to the various different demographics,” Alex Morton, representative of the Marine Safety Forum, added.
He explained that different age groups will respond to different messages in different ways and that is something the offshore sector has to be aware of when rolling out mental health support programmes.
“When we’re looking at the younger, and I say that in the broader sense of the term, they are more likely to communicate via social media and use handheld devices, etcetera,” Morton commented.
“I know from my teenage daughter and how her and her friends communicate, versus how me and my friends communicate.
“I think, ultimately, what the report has allowed us to do is look at the different demographics and maybe streamline how we look to communicate with those various different demographics.
“If I was speaking to peers of mine, if we’re communicated to in a certain way, we will respond to that whereas if you speak to as you would for that 18 to 26-year-old age group, the message is just completely lost on myself.”
Shift workers hit hardest
Offshore workers rated their understanding on how to find mental health support at work at three on average, compared to the four reported by across other sectors.
Also, shift workers were less likely to access support than those working regular 9am to 5pm schedules.
Morton said: “The guys’ interconnectivity on the vessel is getting better as well so that their night shift doesn’t really form a night shift as traditionally offshore night shift would work.
“They work a more six hours on, six hours off, type of rotation so there is that throughout the day throughout the night part of it and with better connectivity we have the opportunity to provide material to the vessels, as an industry, whereby they can access to the support frameworks that they may want.”
He added that mental health has historically been a “taboo” subject within the maritime community and that the first step in ensuring that workers access support is “having the conversation in the first place”.
Also, language barriers create difficulties for workers who are seeking support, Morton argued.
“There is a large percentage of the demographic not having English as its first language and part of what we see when we have our conversations is may be that not having that [mental health materials] in a language where they could find it easier to access, especially then we are still talking about a subject, which as I said at the start, was taboo four to five years ago still and trying to bring it from that taboo thoughts into the forefront that having the language barrier removed would help.”
One in five managers not equipped for mental health chats
Even when workers do pursue support, there is an issue with managers not being equipped to have the conversations needed.
One fifth of the 763 managers surveyed said that they are not equipped to have mental health conversations, however, it is worth noting that 52.3% said they were prepared to have these discussions.
Maryan said the answer to this problem is “being a lot more proactive than is currently being pushed”.
© Supplied by DNV“The next step is about equipping people to have better conversations and to be able to help people in a crisis moment to just bring them down a few levels to improve their state of mind and get them out of that panic anxiety-ridden state of mind.”
To this, Hardie added: “The working group are going to be developing a training session for its managers and its supervisors to be shared across industry to help assist with this and hopefully that’ll give our managers and our supervisors not only the confidence to manage these conversations more effectively but also open up the lines of communication between onshore and offshore that these conversations are important to have and we want to support them in having them.”
Creating resources to address industry pain points
The Wellbeing Report, published on 10 March, asked workers about both physical and mental wellbeing with key findings set to provide a jumping off point for future work.
“This was Step Change’s interim survey, so we’ve actually planned and it’s in the works a longer more in-depth survey where there’ll be a more in-depth interviews conducted about people how people actually find the environment to get really into the meat and bones of how people are doing offshore,” Hardie said.
The objective of the survey was to provide a “snapshot” of this issues facing workers so that the industry bodies can “build and tailor resources in those areas,” the Step Change in Safety boss added.
Listen to the full conversation on Energy Voice Out Loud wherever you get your podcasts.
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