Mental health in arboriculture

John Parker, CEO

In January 2025 I was contacted by Ed Haunton, owner of Approved Contractor EH Tree Care and one of our AC Scheme Assessors.

Ed gave me the tragic news that over the Christmas period three arborists had taken their own lives, and he said that he thinks the Association should be doing more to address the issue of mental health in our sector. This is something we take extremely seriously, and our Chair Neil Davies has often spoken about how it is one of his priorities. However, I acknowledge that we should be doing more and agree entirely with Ed that we have a responsibility to support our members and the wider industry.

You will hopefully be aware that we have a strong partnership with the charity Perennial. Their tagline might be ‘helping people in horticulture’, but this wonderful organisation is equally committed to supporting those in arboriculture and we are working with them to develop some arb-specific resources and materials to make sure our sector is aware that they are here for us too.

You can find out more about the work they do, and ways in which they can help, by visiting their website at www.perennial.co.uk. They are also usually at ARB Show, so please do seek them out and say hello.

We are also looking at some additional things we might be able to do. This year we plan to hold a one-off webinar about mental health in arboriculture, intended to raise awareness and act as a resource on our website afterwards which people can refer to. We will also be investigating the possibility of offering Mental Health First Aider training and toolbox talks to Approved Contractors to ensure that they are able to support their teams. Ultimately, we would like to incorporate this sort of thing into the AC Assessment criteria, and this is being considered as part of the ongoing Scheme review.

As Ed said, in arboricultural contracting we constantly consider health and safety and first aid, but rarely think about mental health. We spend huge amounts of time exploring the minutiae of risk assessments, but sometimes do not give enough thought to the mental, rather than the physical, welfare of the people responsible for implementing them. We all know that arboriculture is an amazing sector to work in, and one of the Association’s main ambitions is to continue to build a strong community of tree care professionals – a community that looks out for each other.

If you have any more ideas on this theme, or if you would just like to chat, then please contact me directly at john@trees.org.uk, or Neil Davies at chair@trees.org.uk.

This article was taken from Issue 208 Spring 2025 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.