Comparative Assessment of the Mental Health of Traditional and Prefabricated Construction Workers

The construction industry has made significant improvement on health and safety performance, but construction workers still suffer from poor mental health and are susceptible to suicide ideation. Although useful, mental health improvement programmes, such as awareness campaigns and counselling, fail to address the stressors that are deeply rooted in the nature of the construction industry and its traditional ways of working. Prefabricated construction, which is the offsite assemblage of project components in a controlled environment before their installation on site, has the potential to reduce the impact of the stressor-inducing nature of the traditional construction. To assess the relevance of prefabrication to mental health improvement, traditional and prefabricated construction workers in Australia were surveyed to capture their stressors and poor mental health symptoms. Prefabricated construction participants reported significantly less exposure to stressors such as work-related criticisms, fatigue or tiredness, and poor working conditions, than the traditional construction workers. Furthermore, traditional construction workers exhibited significantly higher symptoms of burnout and depression such as loss of interest in life, feelings of unhappiness, and depression than their prefabricated construction counterparts. Therefore, the findings of this study show the stressor-reducing potential and mental health improvement quality of prefabrication, if properly planned, implemented, and managed.