Hope for Suicide Prevention

“The bridge is sealed up.” Last month, with those words, the general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge announced the completion of a suicide barrier — stainless steel netting that extends about 20 feet out from the walkway for the length of the bridge, making a jump into the water below extraordinarily difficult.

For decades, friends and family members of people who had jumped pleaded for a barrier. And for decades, my colleague John Branch recently reported, officials found reasons — the cost, the aesthetics — not to build one.

But something is changing in the United States, where the suicide rate has risen by about 35 percent over two decades, with deaths approaching 50,000 annually. The U.S. is a glaring exception among wealthy countries; globally, the suicide rate has been dropping steeply and steadily.

Barriers are in the works on the William Howard Taft Bridge in Washington, D.C., the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in Maine and several Rhode Island bridges. Universities in Texas and Florida have budgeted millions of dollars for barriers on high structures. Scores of communities are debating similar steps.

Research has demonstrated that suicide is most often an impulsive act, with a period of acute risk that passes in hours, or even minutes. Contrary to what many assume, people who survive suicide attempts often go on to do well: Nine out of 10 of them do not die by suicide.

Policymakers, it seems, are paying attention. I have been reporting on mental health for The New York Times for two years, and in today’s newsletter I will look at promising, evidence-based efforts to prevent suicide.