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Barriers may not cut suicides: study

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Jonny5

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Toronto researchers concluded the suicide barrier on The Bloor Viaduct has not detered any suicides. The reduction in suicides by jumping at Bloor was countered by an increase in suicides by jumping from other nearby bridges. The report then suggests previous studies showing a barrier at one location would not simply redirect suicidal people to another were flawed.

Barriers may not cut suicides: study

A new study says that the suicide barrier erected on Toronto's Bloor Street Viaduct hasn't reduced the number of people who jump to their death in Canada's largest city every year.

The report concludes what many critics said at the time the barrier was being built: people intent on committing suicide by jumping from heights will just find another location.

The Bloor Street Viaduct held the dubious distinction of being the bridge with the world's second highest suicide rate after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Between 1992 and 2002, there were an average of 10 suicides a year at the Toronto location.

After the barrier was completed in June 2003, that number dropped to zero.

"However, there was no impact on suicide by jumping in the region as a whole," a summary of the report states. "Toronto's overall yearly suicide rate by jumping was almost unchanged when comparing the pre- and post-barrier periods at 56.4 per year compared to 56.6 per year."

The researchers, led by psychiatrist Dr. Mark Sinyor from University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, also found that "there was a statistically significant increase in suicides by jumping from bridges other than the Bloor Street Viaduct."

One thing that the researchers couldn't quantify however is the effect the barriers may have on impulse actions.

"[The barriers] may save more lives than other suicide prevention strategies, especially in children and young adults, who tend to act impulsively in fleeting suicidal crisis," the study says.

One of the strongest impetuses for the barrier in Toronto was the suicide of 17-year-old Kenneth Au Yeng.

The St. Michael's Choir School student had been admonished on the morning of Dec. 17, 1997 for his part in a school yearbook prank. Several hours later he vaulted over the side of the bridge.

His tragic death helped to push local politicians into taking action.

Similar barriers have also been erected at other world landmarks - the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower being prime examples.

The researchers conclude that, "this research shows that constructing a barrier on a bridge with a high rate of suicide by jumping is likely to reduce or eliminate suicides at that bridge, but it may not alter absolute suicide rates by jumping when there are comparable bridges nearby."

The study was published by the British Medical Association.
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That's fine. What should also be important is the disruptiveness of a suicide. That sounds cold but the economic impacts need to be taken into account. Somebody jumping off a bridge other than the viaduct is likely to cause far less disruption. For this reason, I support PSDs on the subway system.
 
Barriers are not just to prevent service disruptions.

The theory is that suicide barriers do indeed reduce overall suicide rates in the area, because many bridge jumps (by way of example) are impulse reactions to the voices in one's head, rather than planned actions whereby there might also be Plan B, C or D.

So if post-Luminous Veil suicide rates in Toronto haven't dropped, what that might suggest is there's actually an increase to make up for the viaduct decrease.
 
You can read the Study here. I believe the reporters have misinterpreted the results.

They assessed the yearly rates of suicide by jumping at the Bloor Street Viaduct from 1993 to 2001 (nine years before the barrier) and from July 2003 to June 2007 (four years after the barrier). Suicide rates across the region fell. The percentage of suicides by jumping didn't statistically significantly change, but that's to be expected as it was <4% of the suicides in Toronto. The Bloor Street Viaduct fell from 9.3 deaths a year to 0. They don't know if there was a compensatory rise at other bridges or if there was a pre-existing rise in use at other bridges.

The focus of the report was the ineffectiveness of squashing 'hot spots' without both addressing substitute methods (like detoxification of the domestic gas supply in the UK, bans on highly toxic pesticides in Sri Lanka, and decreases in household firearm ownership in the United States) and underlying causes.

The fact that Toronto no longer has the bridge with the world’s second highest annual rate of suicide by jumping after Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is enough reason for me.

Edit:
Annual Suicide Rates by Jumping and Other Table 1
Suicide Rate Comparison Table 2
Location of Last Known Residence Table 3
 
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If you're suicidal and you were smart, you'd jump off the Leaside bridge.

And so what if people choose to quit their lives, just means less competition for me!
 
^^ That's so helpful...

I was actually surprised to see this. While most suicides can't be prevented by just bubble wrapping anything that might be dangerous to a suicidal person, there are certain places that are a kind of suicide mecca, such as the Golden Gate Bridge. The psychology is apparently that people feel like there's something grander about their death if it happens in a special place. Bubble wrapping those places could have a serious affect on the psychology of suicidal people, but it's still not going to do a huge hit to the number of suicides, just put them in a more convenient place.

Though it's true, we should be looking more at why we should get those suicides out of the subway. I've had my fair share of times stuck on the subway because some idiot's somehow gotten themselves on the tracks, whether it's intentional or not, dead or not. And there's also user comfort to take into account, feeling safer while waiting on the platform, no big gusts of wind, etc. And there's probably also platform capacity and loading/unloading tricks that can be worked out. By having a door set where you'll enter the subway, it makes it a lot easier for people to file around the opening, letting people exit the train faster and meaning faster loading times. Though I'm not entirely convinced that it's all worth it.
 
I have two rules about suicide:

1) Don't take anyone with you

2) Don't inconvenience the public

You don't have any say coming into this world but you should have a say when you want to exit it.

My preference is to allow doctor assisted suicides. Aside from not violating either of those two rules, it's less messy, it's done right the first time and organ donation could happen.
 
That would only provide an alternative to premeditated jumping, which I don't believe makes up a significant proportion of jumpers as per my post above.
 
Suicide prevention should not be justification in its own right, but it is a legitmate secondary effect. Every new structure should take into account the "ease of access" and design accordingly. There are lots of cheap solutions. Existing structures can be retrofitted where the disruptions outweigh the costs of construction. Beyond that we need to focus the fundamental disfunction of society to make so many depressed, unhappy people even if only a small part of them seek to end their lives. IMO, assisted suicide should be legal and take 18-months to complete. If you are serious about dying, you can have one last try at living. Anyone that's watched a love one suffer their last weeks might have prefered a clean break instead of the lingering image of fragility that overrides their true lives.

The Mad Navigator said:
Depending on my mental state and if enough people pissed me off, I really wouldn't care about this if I was going to kill myself.
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Only speaking from personal experience (directly and second-hand), it's the same darkness that creates things like Columbine shootings as any other spiteful disruption of society. The only problem with spiteful actions is that the enjoyment is short-lived, and then turns to regret and just reinforces the original negativity. When you are trying to commit suicide, that's not an issue.
 
Publicizing suicides

This isn't 100% related, but my Go Train hit someone on Monday (the 19th) and I can't find any information about the incident anywhere. I've talked to people about it, and apparently Go Train (and probably subway) suicides are hushed up because people don't want others to get ideas. I realize this is a concern, but in a similar way to how the barriers don't stop people from killing themselves, I don't really think that recognizing someone's pain and the tragedy of someone's death is really going to convince more people to kill themselves in a certain way. If anything, I think that bringing these suicides more out into the open will help people feel more comfortable talking about suicide in general, and I think that opens a lot of doors for people to confide in others and express their thoughts/pain in relation to the subject. Just a theory, but I really don't like the fact that I heard this person die, and yet I have no way of finding out anything about them as a real human being.
 
It may make it less of a hushed up issue, but it's a well documented social/psychological phenomenon that knowledge of suicide in people who are potentially suicidal will increase the chance of them committing suicides. They're called secondary suicides, and the idea is that by seeing or hearing of someone else committing suicide, they'll feel like they're less alone in doing so. Kind of like the first suicide acting as a leader towards others.
 
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