Since 1937, more than 1600 people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. This is just one of many suicide hotspots located in the world. Considered such because people use it so frequently to take their lives.

A new theory emerges that says different types of interventions will help to prevent what is happening or at least diminish it. At these places such a  cliffs, bridges, or other high sunmits, suicide rates skyrocket.

Jane Pirkis, a professor at Australia’s University of Melbourne in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and her colleagues have done a study that shows the affect of placing these interventions in 18 hotspots in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China and Europe.

Their results found that putting   up barriers ans railway platforms reduced suicide risks by 93 percent and providing  help numbers  cause  a reduction of 61 percent.

“These numbers are phenomenal,” said Dr. Eric D. Caine, director of the Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Though Caine was  not involved in the study, he wrote a commentary on it which was  published in the journal Lancet.

Sadly, interventions at these  hotspots will not have a huge impact on the overall suicide rate because they are only a small percentage. Out of approximately 40,000 people in the US that commit suicide, 52 percent use guns, 25 hanging, 16 poisoning, while only 2 percent use tall heights or 1 percent in from of moving objects.

Even though putting interventions in place are a good idea, “we have got to have a strategy where fewer people come to suicide attempts, (because) once someone is determined to die, it is much harder to intervene,” Cain said. This idea should include helping the mentally ill and abused he added.

To summarize, the analysis shows that there are three strategies can help significantly: providing self help information, restricting access to sites, and making  it easier for another  person to help.

Impacting and encouraging a person with ways to get help through the phone is a decent way to get to people easily. However, it has had a backwards effect in the past by ‘advertising’ hotspots subsequently increasing rates.

By restricting access to sites, you greatly decrease the amount of suicides in those areas (between 62 and 99%). Some suicide hot spots where barriers were linked with fewer suicides include Ellington Bridge, Memorial Bridge, Gap Park, and many others.

Stationing  police and other  officer s on site have helped intervene in cases. This will also be  more cost efficient. However, it will require a person to be there at all times which could be a little difficult.

To conclude, new studies reveal that suicide hotspots could be effaced simply by doing the above things.

This effects both me and the world because it is helping a person, full of potential, to have another chance at turning their life around and living with just a simple solution. Also, though it is just a small percentage, and even if it only saved one person; to the world that might just be another number or stat, but to their family or peers, they could  be their whole world.

My Katpaw committed suicide last month and him being such a great man, affected everyone that knew him. I received a message from his wife late  that day saying, “I’ll bring very same  news to the people I love. I lost a very close loved one this morning. If anyone knew a wonderful man with a huge heart that never poke harm of anyone, I lost  him. He is in heaven. That is my wish for everyone to know. I am very sad and heartbroken but I am okay. I will travel  the journey that the Lord provides for me. No phone calls please.” The week before I was talking to him about college, music, cars, just life I’m general and he seemed perfectly fine. There’s no reasons to go into the what-ifs at this point but I still believe this is a fulfilling anecdote.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/23/health/saving-lives-worlds-suicide-hot-spots/

Saving lives at 18 of the world’s suicide ‘hot spots’

By Carina Storrs, Special to CNN