A state-of-the-art suicide barrier built to prevent people from jumping to their deaths on the second most deadly suicide bridge in North America has been 100-per-cent successful in its mission.
In some ways, it has also been a failure, according to a new study.
The Bloor Viaduct suicide barrier, a $6-million feat of engineering that managed to marry heritage preservation and life preservation, has eliminated suicides from a bridge that became notorious for them.
But it hasn't stopped people from jumping to their death: They're just using other locations.
A study to be published in the British Medical Journal Wednesday found that although the barrier stopped people from jumping from the Bloor Viaduct, it didn't lower rates of suicide overall, and it didn't lower the number of suicides by jumping.
"This is the first study to show that when a barrier was put on one bridge, there was an increase in suicides on other bridges in the city," said Mark Sinyor, a resident psychiatrist at Sunnybrook health centre and one of the study's two authors.
The bottom line, he said, is that it's not enough to set up physical barriers in single spots that prove popular for people trying to end their lives: There's a need for comprehensive programs that address mental health and suicidal ideation in the first place.
"Bridge barriers work. They work at the location where they have been placed. But ... they're only one piece of the puzzle," Dr. Sinyor said, adding that one tangential but important benefit is the barrier's protection of passing motorists in the Don Valley Parkway underneath.
"We're doing a god job of preventing suicides but ... we have to do better."
Keith Noble figures the Bloor Viaduct gave his cousin Donald an extra 10 minutes.
That's about how long it took for Donald Noble to take the bus from the viaduct to Leaside Bridge. He got off, "walked over to the railing and went over" - within view of the bus driver who dropped him off.
Almost eight years later, Keith Noble still can't fathom his cousin's death: Donald, in his late 50s at the time, was about to get his taxi licence back after a year of struggling with eye surgery and his own demons. He had shrunk, Mr. Noble says; he was frustrated at having lost his livelihood, even temporarily. But "no one saw this coming."
"This seems like a misplaced emotional response to a couple of high-profile suicides that had gone over the bridge," Mr. Noble says.
"If they're going to spend the money, it should go to helping people before they get to that position."
When the city was first studying the possibility of building a suicide barrier on the Bloor Street Viaduct, the looming heritage structure was second only to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge for the number of suicides annually, and the rate of suicides far eclipsed any other bridges in the city, says Mike Laidlaw, the engineer behind the project.
They studied a similar case in Washington, D.C., where a structure on the Duke Ellington Bridge eliminated jumpers there but didn't transfer suicide attempts to other bridges - notably Taft, which is of a similar height and extremely close by.
"There is documented information that basically indicates that's not the case, that once you put a barrier up it doesn't just transfer to other locations. … [The specific location]becomes romanticized," he said.
In the past decade, barriers on bridges - often pricey and controversial, especially on heritage structures - have become one of the more highly regarded ways of preventing suicide: After years of debate, Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge got a barrier in 2004; the B.C. government has pledged to erect barriers on many of its new bridges across the province.
The Toronto Transit Commission vowed earlier this year to set up barriers at each of its 69 subway stations, although the TTC doesn't know where the approximately $10-million per station will come from.
"[Barriers are]definitely seen as being effective within the suicide-prevention community," said Alexis Martis, communication officer with B.C.'s suicide-prevention centre.
"Anything that's going to get someone to take a minute and pause and think about it pulls them out of that space … can be very impactful."
Last spring, the centre set up crisis phones at the Lions Gate Bridge, which sees an average of 16 suicide attempts a year. The phones got about 20 calls, but the centre is still trying to determine their impact on suicide attempts.
But suicide barriers are far from a panacea, argues Chris Summerville, CEO of the Winnipeg-based Schizophrenia Society of Canada.
"Rather than a preoccupation with putting fences on bridges and what have you I'd rather put money into ... getting to a place where we can talk about the s-word and how to do intervention."
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