Every year a few people commit suicide by jumping from the higher bridges over the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities.
Kudos to the University for recognizing the risk. The signs are meant to grab the readers attention as they start to think about suicide, upstream from the waterfall if you like. Making someone self-aware of help at the very time they begin to have those thoughts of jumping.
For more information on the use and effectiveness of crisis call lines,
read here.
There are essentially three main ways to prevent suicide: treatment; means prevention; and access to prevention resources. At the time, Hines wasn’t properly being treated for bipolar disorder; the Golden Gate Bridge has no physical barriers to prevent suicide attempts; and as for the bridge’s suicide prevention call box, Hines didn’t know it was there.
“Had I known, I’m sure I would’ve called,” he says, “because I desperately wanted to talk to somebody.”
Back in New York City’s suicide prevention call center, I ask Draper if it’s difficult to come in to work each day, to motivate his employees to take another call and assure them that what they’re all doing is actually working.
“When I tell people what I do, they say, ‘Oh, Draper, that must be really depressing,’” he says. “And I say, man, I’m in the suicide prevention business, not the suicide business. What I see every day and what our crisis center staff hears every day is hope. And they know that they’re a part of that.”
He says it’s important to remember that 1.1 million adults are attempting suicide every year, but 38,000 are actually dying by suicide.
“What that is telling us is that by and large, the overwhelming majority of suicides are being prevented,” he says. “And those stories are not being told.”
