Suicide Prevention

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opinion/suicide-prevention.html

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To the Editor:

I applaud the urgent desire expressed by people interviewed in “Shedding Light in Suicide’s Shadows” (Metropolitan section, Aug. 21) to install barriers at suicide “destinations” like the George Washington Bridge. And I agree that if any mechanical malfunction proved as deadly, it would be fixed without delay. But I want to highlight another point that was made: the signs overlooked by the loved ones of those who killed themselves, the “cries for help they had dismissed.”

In writing about the suicide of a young Rhodes scholar in my book “The Future Tense of Joy,” I learned that the greatest deterrent is the willingness to acknowledge that someone you love is in trouble and the readiness to reach out and help.

“When people say they want to kill themselves, they mean it,” the brother of my subject observed. “You have to believe them.” Such vigilance, in the face of a pain sometimes too overwhelming to comprehend, would surely save more lives than any bridge barrier.

JESSICA TEICH

Pacific Palisades, Calif.

To the Editor:

Your article discusses the relatively small number of people who kill themselves by jumping off bridges, without ever mentioning that some 20,000 suicides annually — more than half of the total — are firearm suicides.

Gun suicide attempts are fatal 85 percent of the time, and suicide is the second-highest cause of death for 15- to 34-year-olds. No other industrialized country even comes close to the United States in terms of civilian gun ownership, and the suicide rate here has increased 24 percent over the last 15 years.

LINDA IMHAUSER

Whitestone, Queens