"In seven days over 50,000 of you joined an online community[fb] offering encouragement and help.And as the site says every week:
Today (Sunday) at noon hundreds are meeting on the Golden Gate Bridge to take a stand against suicide at the very place where it happens most in the world. (You're invited, look for the yellow balloons and ribbons).
This hopeful story has received international press coverage including this first report on Time Magazine's NewsFeed.
I haven't heard from the person who mailed this postcard, but I have heard from many who have felt lifted by this flashmob of kindness."
Call 1(800)SUICIDE [1-800-784-2433] for help, day or night.(USA only. State by state resources. LGBTQ youth in the USA: 1-866-4-U-TREVOR. Canadian resources, with a special nod to the long-running and incredibly helpful Kids Help Phone, 1.800.668.6868). Outside North America.)
"It's a surprise to me that this number is going up, and I don't think the public knows it."posted by ericb at 10:29 AM on June 13, 2010 [3 favorites]
International Orange.
Suicide is not painless.
The Golden Gate Bridge Suicide Documentary.
“... In 2001, the CDC reported that a high number of moves in a single year is a significant predictor of suicide.posted by ericb at 10:49 AM on June 13, 2010 [3 favorites]
Why highly mobile individuals are at greater risk for suicide is not fully understood. Moving often may be a marker for hard-to-quantify characteristics, such as financial difficulties. Certainly, frequent moves disrupt social networks, including ‘kin support,’ in times of crisis.
Another of Durkheim's convictions -- that mental illness was not the sole explanation for most suicides -- was echoed by the CDC study.
Although suicide attempts often involve chronic mental health problems such as depression, the CDC researchers noted that what they called ‘impulsive suicide attempts’ were immediately preceded by some kind of conflict. Such impulsive suicide attempts, then, don't necessarily derive from an overwhelming desire to die.
Dr. David Brent, academic chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he holds an endowed chair in suicide studies, also cites impulsivity. ‘Man was a hunted animal, so it made sense to have some ability to act quickly,’ Brent says.
A tendency to act on aggressive urges -- without considering the consequences -- was an aid to survival. But a tendency toward impulsivity can increase the possibility of suicide -- particularly, Brent notes, ‘impulsivity in someone who is depressed and has available means.’
Many suicide attempts from the Golden Gate Bridge are made by impulsive people, experts say; the bridge itself represents free access to lethal means.
Is suicide preventable?
This question is central in the debate over whether to put a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.
If we believe that those thwarted by a bridge barrier will simply find another way to end their lives, it follows that suicide cannot be prevented. And if we believe that nothing can be done to stop it, then we need not act.
In the late 1970s, two scientific studies concluded that survivors of suicide attempts from the Golden Gate Bridge do not ‘just go someplace else.’
Dr. David Rosen, then of UCSF's department of psychiatry and Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, spent 2 1/2 years researching ‘Suicide Survivors,’ an in-depth study of six people who survived jumping from the bridge. The study was published in 1975.
Almost unanimously, the survivors said that their ‘will to live had taken over’ after they survived the jump. ‘I was refilled with a new hope and purpose in being alive,’ said one. ‘Surviving reconfirmed my belief and purpose in my life,’ said another. Only one person in the study made a subsequent suicide attempt.
In 1978, Dr. Richard Seiden of UC Berkeley published ‘Where Are They Now?,’ a study of 515 people who, from 1937 to 1971, were prevented from jumping from the bridge. He found that only 6 percent went on to kill themselves -- suggesting that many bridge suicides are impulsive.
‘When a person is unable to kill himself in a particular way, it may be enough to tip the vital balance from death to life in a situation already characterized by strong ambivalence,’ Seiden wrote.
‘The hypothesis -- that Golden Gate Bridge attempters will 'just go someplace else' -- is clearly unsupported by the data. Instead, findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature.
‘Accordingly,’ he concluded, ‘the justification for prevention and intervention such as building a suicide prevention barrier is warranted. And the prognosis for suicide attempters is, on balance, relatively hopeful.’
In the face of the results of these studies and others, why does the rationale for inaction persist?
‘Suicide may seem so out of keeping with most people's attitude toward life that they may feel that someone who considers suicide cannot be dissuaded,’ suggests Brent.
Also, Western culture emphasizes rationality. ‘We assume that suicide is rational, but suicide is not rational,’ says Dr. Anne Fleming, a professor of psychiatry at UCSF.
‘Some people are more likely to develop mental illness, but the capacity is in all of us. It could be anyone -- and that's terrifying. So it's reassuring to believe that these people are different from you and me. To protect ourselves, we distance ourselves from 'those people,' ‘ says Fleming, who is also a member of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, one of the groups lobbying for a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.
‘When we avoid human problems that are elusive or complex, irrational or subterranean, we close our hearts,’ says Sonoma therapist Richard A. Heckler, author of ‘Waking Up Alive,’ a book about survivors of suicide attempts.
‘When we become more distanced from aspects of other people's lives that we don't understand, we reject those parts of our own lives as well.’” ... *
Others areas of primary prevention that have been presented in the literature as important issues for advocacy by primary care professionals are the re- striction of the means of suicide (especially firearms) within the community and the responsible reporting of suicide events in the media (Low and Andrews 1990). Several experts have cited that a restriction of the access to the means of suicide could significantly reduce youth suicide... Despite this assertion no studies have actually evaluated the effect of the introduction of restrictions on the access to means of self-harm on actual suicide rates (Beautrais 1998). Several cross sectional or ecological studies have compared differences in suicide rates with regard to geographical or historical changes in the access to the means of suicide.This is from Youth suicide prevention by primary healthcare professionals [pdf] which is a pretty serious literature review, cited in the WHO study. They go on to mention
The findings from these studies have presented conflicting results, with some suggesting that areas that have tighter restrictions on the access to means of suicide have reduced suicide rates e.g. Marzuk et al. (1992), Kellerman et al. (1992). Other studies have found that there have been no differences in suicide rates between areas with differing access to particular means of suicide, because alternative methods of suicide have increased to offset any potential benefits from the restriction (Rich et al. 1990).
In addition, other restrictions on alternative methods of suicide would also seem appropriate to prevent any substitution of the means of suicide (Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention 1996). For exam- ple, access to known suicide spots should be prohib- ited in existing tall structures or planners should in- corporate adequate barriers in designs for new high buildingsI think people do make the argument that if you remove the low-hanging fruit from the equation, that yes, fewer people will go through the trouble to make an attempt that is more complicated, but it seems like there's conflicting research.
"In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?" the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation."
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This is a pro-life movement we can all get behind.
posted by Night_owl at 8:32 AM on June 13, 2010 [21 favorites]