Over on the Huffington Post, Keith Humphreys, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford, writes about a tragic phenomenon in the Bay Area: the popularity of suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. He makes a case to put public money toward installing nets and other suicide-prevention services there and in other suicide "hotspots."
From the post:
Professor Richard Seiden [PhD] painstakingly tracked down death records for the 515 individuals who had been prevented by police from jumping off the bridge from 1937 to 1971. Remarkably, only 6 percent had committed suicide. Even if every individual who died in what was believed to be an accident were assumed to have intentionally caused their own deaths, the proportion of suicides rose only to 10 percent. In other words, 90 percent or more of people stopped from committing suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge lived out the full natural extent of their lives.
Previously: Full-length video available for Stanford’s Health Policy Forum on serious mental illness, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital partners with high schools on student mental health programs and ECT for depression – not so shocking
Photo by image_monger
