Being a statist means never taking - or assigning - responsibility. When people commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, it was not a choice they made. No...the bridge's lack of a suicide barrier was the real cause. From today's SF Chron:

Church tower bells tolled a dozen times across San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, commemorating the 1,200 people who have committed suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge over the past 69 years. At the base of Old St. Mary's Cathedral near Chinatown, the bells also drew a chorus of weeping from relatives who gathered to mourn their loved ones and urge that a suicide barrier be added to the Bay Area icon. "When the bells are tolling for your son, it's hard not to cry," said Mary Zablotny, 61, whose son, Jonathan, was "18 years, 4 months, 1 week and 2 days" when he died on Feb. 1, 2005.

The attendees at St. Mary's, related to at least four of those who killed themselves by jumping from the span, said their children were undergoing periods of depression that would have faded if the barrier-free bridge had not facilitated their suicides. The relatives said they felt awkward publicizing grief, but they wanted to increase awareness of their position. "If the barrier were there, my daughter would still be alive," said Peter Alexander, 54, an executive at a telecom startup, whose daughter, Alisha, died at age 19 last May.

Wednesday's bell-ringing and a talk in the evening were organized by the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California to promote building a barrier...The Golden Gate Bridge district is about to embark on a two-year, $2 million study of the impact of building a barrier. The general options they'll test include replacing or altering the existing railing or adding a net under the bridge.

The Chron has previously reported that the barrier would cost $15 to $25 million, but that the Golden Gate Bridge District already faces a projected $70 million deficit over the next five years.

I sympathize greatly with the grief of the parents, but externalizing responsibility to an inert phyiscal structure ill-serves prevention of future suicides. The issue is to identify the risk and ensure appropriate treatment. There will always be other ways to commit suicide, after all.

Some context is helpful. Golden Gate Bridge jumpers represent an infintesimal fraction of annual California suicides. An average of 17 people per year have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, over 69 years, according to the Chron's stats. But over a three-year period from 1999 through 2001, an average of 2,959 Californians per year committed suicide, according to the California Suicide Prevention Fact Sheet of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. Which tells us that jumpers off the Golden Gate Bridge account for less than six-tenths of one percent of annual California suicides. The fact sheet also notes that firearms, suffocation and poisoning are the leading causes of suicide in California. More recent national data from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control also show that nationally firearms, suffocation and poisoning are the first, second and third leading causes, respectively, of suicide.

Additionally, California's suicide rate is one of the nation's lowest. The American Association of Suicidology in Washington D.C. has crunched the most recent statewide data from the CDC on suicides; this table shows California ranks 42nd out of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia in annual suicide rates. This indicates that suicide prevention efforts plus familial and societal strictures against suicide are generally working in California and should receive continued emphasis; rather than encouraging $15 million to $25 million of new spending by a government entity facing a debt in the neighborhood of $70 million.

We should also note that even if the proposed suicide barriers were installed on the Golden Gate Bridge at a cost of millions to taxpayers, the romantic pull of the cliffs along the California coast would present the same sort of risk to those who prefer to leap to their deaths.

The utopian world view assumes there is a mechanistic solution to every problem and failing arising from the human condition. But there is not.

However, since I am interested in neither suicide nor accidental death, I would greatly appreciate some cliffside safety railings on the outer edge of the coastal highway at Big Sur, and further north, between Jenner and Gualala. There are some real white-knuckle spots with which to contend.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN FRANCISCO, GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, SUICIDE BARRIER, SUICIDE, CAUSES, RANKINGS, RESPONSIBILITY, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 25, 2006 12:46 PM

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