The Bridge Rail Foundation estimates that there have been almost 1,600 suicide deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge since it opened in 1937, and the San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors recently approved $76 million in funding to install a 20-foot-wide steel net to deter suicide jumpers.
In a piece on the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Stanford's Keith Humphreys, PhD, examined the effectiveness of bridge barriers on suicide prevention, writing that "a half century of experience and evidence supports an optimistic view." He highlights several small studies before writing:
Because suicide by jumping is a mercifully rare event, most studies of barriers have small samples, making findings unstable and the difference between the Toronto study and other research unsurprising. Statistically, a more reliable result would come from combining the findings across all prior studies. When Dr. Jane Pirkis of the University of Melbourne led such a “meta-analysis” in 2013, she and her colleagues found that on average barriers reduce suicides by 86% at the barrier site, and that jumping suicides at other nearby sites rise by 44%. The net benefit is a 28% decrease in suicides by jumping per year.
Dr. Pirkis’ findings bode well for the success of San Francisco’s suicide barrier, which is expected to be installed in about three years. Even if the net has only the average level of effectiveness, it would have saved a life a month in 2013 alone, as well as sparing the families of the deceased years of mental and emotional anguish.
Jen Baxter is a freelance writer and photographer. After spending eight years working for Kaiser Permanente Health plan she took a self-imposed sabbatical to travel around South East Asia and become a blogger. She enjoys writing about nutrition, meditation, and mental health, and finding personal stories that inspire people to take responsibility for their own well-being. Her website and blog can be found at www.jenbaxter.com.
Previously: Stanford researcher examines link between sleep troubles and suicide in older adults and Stanford’s Keith Humphreys on Golden Gate Bridge suicide prevention: Get the nets
