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Aswad -> RE: Guns and Suicide (4/11/2013 4:31:59 PM)
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
I give up. Suicides away from the bridge are increasing? If so, are we confidently talking about 'cause' and 'effect', here?
The evolution over time is about the same number of suicides, but an increase in young adults involved in fatal head-on collisions with trucks and the like (traumatizing the truck drivers), and an increase in those too young for a licence using other means (though, admittedly, not as effective as a 150 yard drop into icy waters with a current leading out into the North Sea and no nearby rescue vehicles).
Cause and effect cannot be clearly established by time series, of course, but the data is consonant with the ends coming before the means, and new means being sought toward the same ends. I do think you can credibly make it too hard to do it impulsively, but I'm not sure the cost to everyone else will be worth it. And I'm fairly certain there's other measures that would make more sense, like increased access to psychiatric help in that age bracket (it's mostly young people that used to jump off the bridge).
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Anyway: My suggestion: move the bridge a thousand miles south. While you're at it, move all the people, and Norway, along with the bridge. Norway is too frigging cold and dark too much of the time. This is not conducive to people feeling of a sunny and non-suicidal disposition, I'm given to understand. As a Brit, I can relate, of course.
I'm all for that. In fact, why not grab all of Scandinavia, and put us in the middle of the Atlantic, with bridges to the UK, the US and mainland EU, while we're at it?
And, yes, SAD is more prevalent here than in more southern countries.
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That was a favourite suicide spot until some years ago, when they put nets up along its sides.
Yeah, they're working on that here, too. And repairing cuts in the nets they have. Insert black humor laugh.
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I can actually *feel* myself dropping, in a way, when I look over the edge.
Seeing as the bridge here has about twice the clearance of the Bristol one, I imagine it's probably got the same effect.
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I can understand why it has its strange attraction for suicidals - beyond any tower block or other high point in the country.
Availability and tidyness.
You just go up to the bridge, walk across, then jump off, and if they find your body, it'll be fairly neat, compared to what it would look like if you jumped from a building. And, of course, you don't risk landing in front of someone (traumatic) or worse yet on them (probably fatal), don't have to deal with finding your way to the roof (depressives aren't always all that energetic), interacting with people along the way up (the last thing you want in that frame of mind, usually), possibly meeting a locked door, etc.
It's fairly hard to kill yourself, even on impulse, and few want to die painfully.
An acquaintance of mine cut major blood vessels in 18 (!) different places. They had to transfuse about 20 bags patching him up at the hospital, and he spent months in there (though I'm not sure how much was in the psych ward). Most people I've spoken to about it, their first thought is how that must have felt for the family member that found him. Mine is what he must have felt like to go through with it. I mean, it's not exactly the most pleasant way to go, and the cuts were made individually and deliberately. Family and friends watched him all the time, but he still made nearly a dozen attempts that were very nearly successful (he lives close to an ER, and we have 5 min airlift to one of the best equipped ER surgeries in the country, which is next door to one of the three main blood banks), most of them requiring that level of will to die.
Anyway, yeah, some experience with suicides, ranging from the impulsive to the rational, from those that succeeded to those that weren't really trying and those that accidentally succeeded. Also talked people out of it and sat suicide watch. Still consider it a right to choose when to die, but the person should be able to articulate their choice and I'll attempt to talk someone out of it (though I don't interfere if it's articulated well enough that I don't consider it an impulsive choice).
People that rationally want to die tend to succeed at it.
Increasingly, this is becoming true of women, too, with methods being equalized more between genders. A knife through the major blood vessels of the neck, for instance, tends to be game over. Traditionally, women have picked less "violent" means of suicide, but just as women are catching up in terms of violence directed at others, they're catching up in that which is directed at themselves, too. It's one of several reasons suicides are being taken more seriously now.
Just not seriously enough to do much about the suffering that tends to be a precursor to it.
I'm rambling again. Sorry.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
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