Since the year 2000 thirteen people have died from jumping off the Natchez Trace Bridge in Franklin, Tennessee. People are asking why. Why this particular bridge? Why these particular people? More urgently, people are asking what---if anything--should be done about it.
Two measures have been proposed. One is inexpensive but not likely to work. The other is more costly to implement, but a proven life-saver.
The frugal approach, posting signs on the bridge urging suicidal people to call for help, certainly couldn't do any harm. But it's unlikely to prevent anyone from jumping off. Suicide by jumping is known to be an act of impulse, somewhat like shooting a lover in a flash of rage. At such a moment one does not stop to read messages, call mental health workers, or wait around for helpers to arrive on the scene.
The method that works (as shown by many careful studies) is simply to make the bridge harder to jump from. Higher railings, metal safety nets, even mildly electrified balustrades on "suicide magnet" bridges have drastically reduced death rates everywhere they're used.
But wait--wouldn't the suicidal person just go home from the bridge and shoot himself? Or locate a more accommodating bridge? The idea seems commonsense, but in fact these impulsive bridge-jumpers seldom come to the brink with a Plan B. They have fixed their minds on an iconic, somehow symbolic bridge (like San Francisco's Golden Gate, or Tennessee's Natchez Trace). If they're blocked, the impulse to jump wanes and they usually just retreat and go on with life.
Sound improbable? This fascinating study by Berkeley psychologist Richard Seiden may convince you: Seiden collected police records on 515 would-be-jumpers who, over a 40-year span, were one way or another thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate bridge. He found that only 6% ever went on to kill themselves. Ninety-four percent of these people got over it, whatever the "it" was that had driven them to mortality's doorstep.
"Means restriction" is what we are talking about, an approach to suicide prevention that focuses, so to speak, on the "method" of the suicidal person, not just the "madness" that may underlie the wish to die. There are other famous examples of successful means restriction besides bridge modification.
Take the British coal-gas story. Until the 1960's the people of Britain heated and cooked with coal gas, which contains high levels of carbon monoxide. For a suicidal person, this meant that every home provided its own execution chamber--some 2500 people killed themselves every year in Britain by sticking their heads into ovens with the gas turned on. Then the British government--motivated by economy, not public health--phased out coal gas in favor of natural gas, which contains essentially no carbon monoxide. By the early 1970's, the overall rate of suicide in Britain (not just suicide by carbon monoxide) had dropped by a third, and has remained at that low level. Similarly, we see sharp reductions in poisoning deaths from acetaminophen (Tylenol and other drugs) when drug companies are required to dispense only a non-lethal quantity of pills in each bottle sold.
It's too easy to take a what's-the-use attitude about suicide. An official connected with the project says, "I'm not sure a fence or a net would solve the tragedies or stop them." If he is unaware of the literature on means restriction, he needs to do his homework. If he is using this as an easy excuse to save money, he should consider the millions of dollars of lost productivity represented by those thirteen lost lives and those to follow.
There are many hurtful misconceptions about suicide. It's disheartening to see a public official espousing the worst of them: that if someone wants to die, there's little anyone can to do prevent the tragedy.
