For almost 70 years now, the Golden Gate Bridge has been a frequent site for suicide. While the Bridge District has failed to take the action needed to stop these deaths, research and studies within the medical community have deepened our understanding of suicide and how to prevent it.
As the science of understanding suicide now stands, we can say without a doubt that preventing the possibility of jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge will save lives. There are three principal reasons for this:
Let's take a look at each of these points and the research behind them.
In October 2005, JAMA published the most complete review ever undertaken of suicide prevention techniques. Twenty-three physicians and scientists from the US, Europe, and Asia authored the review after carefully studying forty years of published scientific research. They concluded that restricting access to lethal means is one of only two scientifically established methods to reduce suicides.
See Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA), 2005, 294; 2064-2074
Some of the research these scientists and physicians considered is summarized below:
Remember the phrase "go stick your head in the oven"? It comes from a time in Great Britain when cooking gas had a high concentration of poisonous carbon monoxide. As a result, there were many suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning. When Great Britain changed to the low carbon monoxide content cooking gas we use today, the national suicide rate dropped by 26%.
More suicides in the US are by gunshot than by any other means. Seventeen published studies show the rate of suicide death in gun-owning households is at least three times greater than in households where guns are not present. But where guns are present, proper safety procedures - use of gunlocks and securing the ammo - cuts the risk of suicide by two-thirds. (See: Shenassa, 2004)
Use of some prescription and over-the-counter drugs has been a means of suicide for many years. However, as the availability of these drugs changes, so does the number of suicides. In Australia, suicide from sedative overdose increased when the drugs were easier to get and declined when access was restricted. In the UK, limiting access to an over-the-counter drug by simply shifting from bulk packaging to small-unit packaging reduced suicides. (See: JWEM, July 2001)
A complete set of research references is included with the article originally published in JAMA.
One study in Texas looked at 153 cases of near-lethal suicide attempts. Researchers found that 24% of these individuals spent less than 5 minutes between the decision to commit suicide and the attempt. (See: Simon, 2001).
A study of 54 bridge suicides in Montreal found that 44 of the individuals had experienced recent personal problems.
Another study of suicides in the Montreal subway found that 100 of the 129 individuals studied had an adverse life event within two weeks of the death. (See: Mishara, 1999)
Cognitive tests for impulsivity and impaired decision-making consistently show higher scores for suicidal individuals than controls in national studies. (See: Jollant, 2005)
Dr. Richard Seiden of UC Berkeley's School of Public Health investigated the lives of more than 500 people removed from the Golden Gate Bridge as they were about to jump. He found that, for an average of 26 years after the suicide attempt, 94% of these people were either still living or had died of natural causes.
Twenty-eight people are known to have jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and lived. Of these, only two are known to have subsequently committed suicide.
Credit: Special thanks to Anne Fleming MD for much of the research on this page.