For Fear Of Jumpers Golden Gate Bridge Installs Suicide Net For The Distraught

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

Stainless-steel netting hanging 20 feet down and extending 20 feet on either side will be placed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge to catch would-be suicide jumpers, San Francisco officials decided Friday


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Oct 11, 2008 - Golden Gate Bridge Officials Vote for Net to Stop Suicides


Earlier design proposal in 2007

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Golden Gate Bridge to get suicide net to catch would-be jumpers
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Agency decides that the barrier would be the least visible of five alternatives.
But no source of funding has been determined for the estimated $50-million project

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 11, 2008

http://www. latimes. com/news/printedition/california/la-me-goldeng...

Stainless-steel netting costing up to $50 million will be placed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge to catch would-be suicide jumpers, San Francisco officials decided Friday

The decision by the board of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District follows several years of controversy.
The agency has yet to determine how to finance it, said spokeswoman Mary Currie

The netting was the "locally preferred alternative," Currie said.
More than 5,000 comments came flooding into the agency as part of its environmental review process

About 2,000 people have jumped from the storied bridge since it opened in 1937. So far this year, 19 have made the leap, which is almost always fatal.
Whether public funds should be used to prevent additional suicides has been passionately debated

Writing to the board last summer, San Francisco resident Paul J.
Miller expressed a view that many others had raised: "Attention should be given to mental health assistance," he wrote, "not paying tens of millions of dollars to contractors who are just trying to milk money from citizens"


On the other hand, the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California has supported the idea, contending that the effectiveness of barriers has been "dramatic" at such landmarks as the Empire State Building and Eiffel Tower

The group also cites a study of 515 people who were stopped from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
It concluded that 94% of them were alive or had died naturally long after their thwarted attempts

In its 14-1 vote Friday, the agency's directors determined that a net would be the least visible of five alternatives

The others included extending the height of the bridge's railing from four to 12 feet -- an option widely criticized as too obtrusive

All of the possibilities -- except doing nothing -- would cost $40 million to $50 million, Currie said

The plastic-coated steel cable will be seen from only a few spots on the bridge's walkway.
Hanging 20 feet down and extending 20 feet on either side, it will be the same color as the Art Deco span

It also will cost $78,000 a year to maintain, compared with $500,000 for the railing, according to the district

James Eddie, the one board member who voted no, raised the issue of the barrier's cost

The agency will draw up a final environmental plan, examining, among other issues, the danger the net might pose to birds flying into it

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World crisis may cause suicide rise: WHO
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The Age Australia
October 10, 2008

http://news. theage. com. au/world/world-crisis-may-cause-suicide-r...

The global economic crisis is likely to cause an upsurge in suicides and mental illness as people struggle to cope with losing their homes or livelihoods, the World Health Organisation has warned

"We should not be surprised or underestimate the turbulence and the likely consequences of the financial crisis," WHO Director General Margaret Chan on Thursday told a meeting of mental health care professionals in Geneva

"It should not come as a surprise if we continue to see more stresses, more suicides and more mental disorders," she said

Just this week, a 45-year-old business school graduate in Los Angeles shot dead five members of his family before killing himself, telling police in a suicide letter that he had been driven to the deed because of his dire economic situation

The Los Angeles case came less than a week after a 90-year-old woman in the US state of Ohio shot herself as she was about to be served an eviction notice on the home she has lived in for the past 38 years

However, Chan stressed that the majority of people worldwide suffering from mental illness live in low- and middle-income countries, where there is an "abysmal lack of care," inadequate mental health care budgets and where victims suffer from social stigma and discrimination

Chan was speaking at the launch of the WHO's Mental Health Gap Action Programme which aims to redress the balance

The WHO estimates that three quarters of the global burden of neuropsychiatric disorders falls in low -and middle- income countries, and that in these countries, around three quarters of affected people cannot afford treatment

"Care for these highly prevalent, persistent, and debilitating disorders is not a charity.
It is a moral and ethical duty," Chan said

© 2008 AFP

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WARNING! Bridge Suicide Footages (DONT EVEN TRY IT)
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