Shayna Klassen, national training director for the QPR Institute, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast for Trades Day to discuss the QPR for Ironworkers Program, the partnership between QPR and the Ironworker Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust (IMPACT) — the labor-management partnership of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers, AFL-CIO — and the evidence-based suicide prevention training now being implemented across Local Unions in the United States and Canada.
Klassen is a suicide attempt survivor and a suicide loss survivor who has been in long-term recovery since Feb. 1, 2003. She shared her personal story to provide context for the work she does and to explain why lived experiences are central to how the program reaches union ironworkers. She described a moment at an IMPACT Conference in Florida when a one-hour presentation turned into hours of active conversations about loss, crisis and need, which became the catalyst for the curriculum called QPR for Ironworkers.
Klassen explained why the mental health field had to change its approach, rather than asking ironworkers to change their culture, and how the program is now building toward a permanent instructor base in every Local, with the goal of making QPR training a mandatory part of the apprenticeship program.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential and available 24 hours a day.
- QPR, which stands for Question, Persuade, Refer, is described as CPR and first aid for suicide prevention. It teaches people to recognize the warning signs of someone in a suicidal crisis, ask the direct question — “Are you thinking about suicide?” — persuade that person to seek help in the moment and refer them to a mental health professional. QPR is based on more than 20 years of research and $20 million invested in that research. It can be taught to anyone age 12 or older. QPR for Ironworkers is a topic-specific version of the curriculum built with and for ironworkers, using their language and their culture rather than generic mental health messaging.
- Ironworkers have the highest rate of suicide within the construction industry, which is itself the second-highest industry for suicide rates behind mining, according to CDC data as of 2021. When Klassen presented at the IMPACT Conference in Florida, the room was packed beyond capacity with ironworkers, apprentices and leaders who said they were losing colleagues and did not know what to do. She left the conference with ironworkers calling her about active crisis situations and returned home committed to building something fundamentally different from standard gatekeeper training.
- QPR for Ironworkers has been implemented across Local Unions throughout the U.S. and Canada through four instructor certification trainings, producing up to 35 certified instructors each. Training is available in person, virtually and through online self-paced formats. The program is built on the principle that training ironworkers is more effective than outside mental health professionals delivering standard content, and Klassen said the goal is to have QPR training mandated as part of the apprenticeship program for every new ironworker.
A Personal Story That Drives the Work
Shayna Klassen came to suicide prevention the way many people come to work that matters most: through lived experience. She is a person in long-term recovery, sober since Feb. 1, 2003. She is a suicide attempt survivor who has lost people in her life to suicide. She holds a degree in mental health and a bachelor's degree in psychology and criminology, but she is clear that it was her lived experience, not her academic credentials, that brought her to this career.
She grew up in a small blue-collar town in Vermont with a population of 250. Her father got sober when she was 5 years old, the same year he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She grew up around AA rooms and in hospitals, absorbing a great deal about difficult subjects at a young age. She describes significant external pressure and the kind of adverse childhood experiences that research connects to substance use and mental health challenges. She began using substances when she was eight or nine years old, eventually becoming an IV drug user by age 10. She got sober at 16 after being sent to different treatment facilities. She came home at 18 and began a recovery journey that was not easy and that she has maintained for more than two decades.
She has been declared clinically dead three times. She has overdosed and been through things she said she could not have imagined sharing publicly. But she shares those experiences because every time she does, someone comes up to her afterward and says, “Hearing you speak made me feel like there is hope. It made me feel like I can survive.” That response, repeated across the years, is why she keeps telling her story.
QPR: CPR for Suicide
The QPR Institute's training model — Question, Persuade, Refer — is the evidence-based curriculum Klassen represents as national training director. She describes it as CPR and first aid for suicide. The goal is to give anyone the skills to recognize when someone may be experiencing a suicidal crisis, to ask the direct question — “Are you thinking about suicide? Are you thinking of harming yourself?” — to persuade that person to live in the moment and seek help, and to refer them to a mental health professional. The curriculum can be taught to anyone age 12 and older. It has more than 20 years of research behind it and more than $20 million in research investment. That research demonstrates that QPR training saves lives.
The IMPACT Conference and the Moment Everything Changed
Klassen had been national training director for the QPR Institute for a matter of days when she received a call asking her to travel to Florida for an IMPACT Conference — the national gathering of the labor-management partnership of the International Association of Iron Workers. She had never heard of an ironworker. She Googled the trade on the plane.
What she encountered in that conference room was not what she had prepared for. The room was packed. Ironworkers, apprentices, business managers and local leaders filled every available space. She delivered a general presentation on suicide in the trades and QPR's approach. What happened in response was something she had not seen before.
Union Brothers and Sisters stood up and said, “We are dying. My colleagues are dying. I wish I had known what to say. I wish I had known what to do. I wish I could have kept my Brother, my Sister, and my colleague alive.” People brought her their phones showing text messages from apprentices in an active crisis. The one-hour presentation stretched into hours of real conversations, real need, real grief and real resolve, she said. Even after she reached the airport, her phone kept ringing. Ironworkers across the country wanted to know what they could do, how they could bring QPR back to their locals and what came next.
She left Florida knowing that implementing standard training was not the answer. Something fundamentally different was needed.
QPR for Ironworkers: The Solution Had to Change
Back home, Klassen wrote a proposal to the International Association of Iron Workers and IMPACT describing a different kind of partnership. The core insight she brought back from that conference was that the mental health field's standard approach — come in, deliver training, leave — does not create anything lasting in a community like the Iron Workers Union. And more fundamentally, the mental health field has a habit of telling construction workers they need to change their culture, she said. That approach will never work, she added.
What she observed in ironworkers was something she did not want to alter: an extraordinarily cohesive family culture, a deep loyalty that runs across locals and across the country, and a sense of belonging inseparable from who ironworkers are as a community. Why would anyone want to take that away, she asked? The culture was not the problem. The solution the mental health field was offering was the problem.
QPR for Ironworkers was built on a different premise. The evidence-based QPR framework is maintained in full. The curriculum is adapted so that ironworkers can see themselves in it, hear themselves in it and speak from it in their own words. Klassen describes it as giving ironworkers the skeletal structure of an evidence-based program and then trusting them to put the muscle and the voice on it themselves. No scripts. No generic mental health language. Iron Workers train Iron Workers.
The program includes instructor certification training, with four cohorts of up to 35 certified instructors each, trained and deployed across Local Unions in the U.S. and Canada. Training is delivered in person, via Zoom and through online self-paced formats depending on what each local's situation allows. The program is partnered with Modern Assistance Programs, which serves as the EAP provider supporting broader mental health knowledge and resources for ironworkers alongside the QPR training.
A contractor partner, Bolt Construction, supported the program after losing an employee to suicide. That worker's family created an awareness video that was shown at the IMPACT Conference, urging ironworkers to get trained so no one else would have to suffer the same loss. The room, Klassen said, had the chills.
The goal going forward is to have QPR training mandated as part of the apprenticeship program. Leadership at the International, including the president, has made mental health a priority, and that support from the top is what Klassen said is allowing the program to grow.
Stigma, Progress and What Is Actually Working
Klassen said stigma is still real and present. She hears it at conferences — offhand comments from people who do not know who she is, expressing reluctance about mental health programming. She said she is not discouraged by it. She sees it as part of the landscape that the program is working within and working through.
What she points to as evidence of progress is that room in Orlando. If stigma were unmovable, that room would not have been packed. If ironworkers were not ready to talk, they would not have stayed for hours after the scheduled presentation ended. If the culture were an obstacle rather than a foundation, it would not be the basis on which the program is being built.
Klassen is still building toward the point at which the program's reach is broad enough and sustained enough to show measurable outcomes, but she is confident the data will tell the story. The early signs are that ironworkers training ironworkers, using their own words and within their own culture, is the right approach, she said. And her phone keeps ringing.
More information on QPR and the QPR for Ironworkers program is available at qprinstitute.com. More information on IMPACT is available at impact-net.org.
If You or Someone You Know Is Struggling
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or a mental health crisis, call or text 988. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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