By Ronda Kaysen, New York Times Service, January 9, 2026...
RAYNHAM, Mass. — A stack of paint buckets. Trowels nestled along the wall. A hard hat. These items remain, untouched since March 15, in Timothy J. Kimball’s backyard work shed.
It has been 10 months since Kimball, at 37, quietly walked into his Raynham, Massachusetts, bedroom on a chilly Saturday afternoon and killed himself. And it is in his work shed where his father, Timothy Kimball, lingers in his only son’s presence. “This is where he’d come out, smoke, have a cigarette — I feel him here,” the elder Kimball, 62, said, after rifling through his son’s first tool bag, from when he became an apprentice in the painters union almost 20 years ago. “I tend to talk to him here.”
The younger Kimball, whom everyone called TJ, was a drywall finisher, known as a taper, the laborer who prepares freshly hung drywall for a coat of paint. He came from three generations in the trades — his father, uncles and great-uncles were all tapers and carpenters in the Boston area.
Over 300 people, stunned by the loss, turned up for his wake.“It’s just like a big, huge tsunami came in and wiped everything out,” said TJ Kimball’s oldest sister, Shannon Kilburn, 43.
The shattering loss of TJ Kimball was not an isolated incident. The construction industry has one of the highest suicide rates of any major industry in the country, second only to mining, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Add in drug overdoses, where construction workers die at a greater rate than workers in any other industry, and a bleak picture emerges of a population in crisis.
Construction is already among the most dangerous jobs in the country, with about 1,000 people dying each year from work-related injuries, more than any other industry. But five times as many workers, 5,100, died by suicide, and 15,900 died from drug overdoses, in 2023, according to an analysis of the most recent federal data by the Center for Construction Research and Training, an occupational safety organization. While the number of overdoses declined from 2022, from 17,000, the number of suicides remained virtually unchanged.
“The crisis affects every single job on every single job site in this country,” said Sonya Bohmann, the executive director of the Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention, a nonprofit organization. Employers and unions have expanded access to mental health support and drug treatment programs; job sites often stock Narcan, or naloxone, a drug that reverses the effect of an overdose, in first aid kits; drug testing is increasingly commonplace; and companies and unions offer suicide prevention training programs. But the crisis persists.
Construction workers are particularly vulnerable to suicide because of a collision of risk factors. Men without a college degree and veterans, two groups with high rates of suicide and of gun ownership, often work in construction.
Guns are used in the majority of all suicides, and men who own handguns are nearly eight times as likely to die by gun suicide than those who do not.
Construction is hard, physical labor, often done outside in the elements and sometimes far from home.
“It’s also a very cyclical job — you can’t guarantee a 40-hour week,” said Shawn Nehiley, president of the Ironworkers District Council of New England. “You don’t know if you’re going to be laid off, if you’re going to work overtime.”
Get hurt on the job and a painkiller prescription can spiral into addiction, as it did for Nehiley, who was prescribed opioids in 2001 for an injury, leading to a relapse of an addiction that began in adolescence. “The prayers before I went to bed at night were ‘Please God, don’t let me wake up in the morning,’” said Nehiley, 62, now sober for 15 years. In his office hang 45 prayer cards and photographs of union members who died from overdoses or suicide since 2008. “And that’s not all of them,” he said.
No occupation has a higher rate of substance abuse than construction and extraction. A substance abuse disorder, even for someone in recovery, increases suicide risk.
“There’s this high density of risk with this community,” said Craig Bryan, a clinical psychologist and the director of the University of Vermont Medical Center’s suicide care clinic.
Interviews with dozens of construction workers described a culture of widespread drinking and drug use. “There’s cocaine, there’s pills, there’s even alcohol at lunch,” said Paul Reed, a recovering addict who runs Roofers in Recovery, a Colorado nonprofit organization.
The regional chapter of Kimball’s union, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, does not track how many of its 4,000 members die by overdose or suicide. But its quarterly magazine memorializes members who died in the intervening months. In the spring issue, of the 28 people commemorated, four died by overdose or suicide. One of them was Kimball. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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