Posted by Concerned parent, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Oct 27, 2009 at 8:58 am Here is what was published in the mercury news in case you have not read it.
Preventing suicides at Palo Alto train crossing
By Lisa M. Krieger
lkrieger@mercurynews.com
Posted: 10/24/2009 08:08:00 PM PDT
Updated: 10/25/2009 12:16:05 AM PDT
There's nothing notable about the train crossing at Palo Alto's Meadow Drive, a weedy and gravel-lined site in a town of beauty and comfort.
But four students from one school in the past six months have traveled there to end their lives, a pattern that stuns and mystifies this community. A fifth attempt was interrupted.
The "why" behind the deaths remains a riddle. But experts are urging a much harder look at the "how" of suicide — and what could break such a chain of self-destruction. Research into other suicide hot spots — the Empire State Building, England's Beachy Head, Sydney's Harbor Bridge, Japan's Mount Mihara and Toronto's Prince Edward Viaduct — shows that reducing or delaying access can deter death.
"If you can stop them from dying at your railroad tracks, there's a great likelihood they will not try it again," said Dr. Mel Blaustein of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, whose study of Golden Gate Bridge suicides is published in the October issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
"Suicide 'hot spots' become the place to go; there's a specialness about them," he said. "If you stop it, it loses its mystery and magic."
Nothing as simple as a fence or net will fix Palo Alto's problem. Several Caltrain officers try to patrol the 52 miles of tracks and have intervened many times. Separating trains from the street — through overpasses or tunnels — takes years and costs millions
Advertisement
of dollars. Around-the-clock police staffing pulls officers away from other important work. Anguished, the community is debating other solutions, such as volunteer patrols, better lighting, a pedestrian overpass or surveillance cameras — all good ideas, research indicates.
In a closed meeting Wednesday, Caltrain officials met with school and community groups. "We're trying to see how to address the issue," said Caltrain spokeswoman Tasha Bartholomew. "We don't know what the solution is now, but the first step is having a conversation about it that we haven't had before."
New research
Researchers are now conducting America's first study of railroad suicides, funded by the Federal Railroad Administration, entailing interviews with families of 356 victims to identify common patterns in how, when and why they chose that means of death.
"What we learn can be used to help design prevention programs," said Karen Marshall of the American Association of Suicidology, which is conducting the five-year project. "It will take a combination of things, depending on the situation. And there has to be a partnership between the railroad and the community. Once someone heads in that direction, your chance of intervention is measured in minutes, even seconds."
In Europe, where trains are far more prevalent, solutions include impenetrable barriers, thorny bushes along tracks, video cameras on trestles and earsplitting messages.
Even the most improbable site can become an icon to teenagers, who are suggestible and impulsive, according to Blaustein and other mental health experts. Such a place — particularly if it is accessible and highly lethal — can trigger or amplify suicidal feelings in vulnerable youngsters.
Cutting off or slowing down access can allow the impulse to pass, they said.
"Barriers work. Conventional wisdom says that people might go to other places to kill themselves. But conventional wisdom has been proven to be wrong," said Eve Meyer, executive director of San Francisco Suicide Prevention.
Studying the students, experts are puzzled. While several lived near the tracks, the crossing is 1.7 miles from Gunn High School; another crossing is closer. Several other local high schools sit right next to the tracks, yet have had no rash of suicides. And while Gunn is academically demanding, it's hardly alone. After the first death, the school has expended great effort to help other students.
Clustered deaths
The trend of clustered suicides was termed "The Werther Effect'' by researcher David Phillips to describe a series of deaths of German young men in the 1770s after publication of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther," in which the hero shoots himself.
Some say Gunn seems touched by an insidious "meme" — an infectious idea or practice — that wrongly suggests to students that death by train is romantic, painless and acceptable because it was done by others.
Iconic spots gain an allure in troubled minds. One landmark study by University of California-Berkeley's Richard Seiden — published in 1983 — found that between 1937 and 1979, 58 people drove across the Bay Bridge on their way to jump from their cars and commit suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge.
Among reasons cited for jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, according to Blaustein's research, was this: "You're with all those people who jumped before."
"There seems to be a symbolic value to the site, within that school," said San Jose-based child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. David Arredondo. "That needs to be looked at seriously."
Reducing access
Suicides slow or stop when easy access is denied. Sadly, the most impulsive tools, such as trains and guns, are the most deadly; methods that require planning, such as pills, are often survivable. At the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard's School of Public Health, new attention is focused on this single strategy, called "means restriction": Put more time between the person and their ability to act.
For example, when lethal coal gas was used to heat homes in England, one-third of suicides were due to asphyxiation by this gas. After nonlethal natural gas was substituted in the 1960s, the suicide rate in England fell by more than 25 percent.
Another study found that suicides in Sri Lanka dropped by half in a decade when several highly lethal pesticides were banned.
Similarly, storing a gun in a lockbox or keeping ammunition in a different room have been proven to reduce the odds that the weapon will be used in suicide.
The mere presence of others can also help. Since the 1600s, the cliffs at England's Beachy Head claimed an average of 20 people a year. But when a chaplain conducted day and evening patrols, the number fell to seven.
Concern about students led the high-pressure Cornell University, with a steep rocky gorge on campus that has attracted suicides, to buck privacy concerns and create an "alert team" of administrators, campus police and counselors to meet weekly to compare notes on students' emotional health. Even librarians and custodians are trained to intervene in potentially dangerous behaviors.
Suicidal people get fixated, say experts — and when access to an iconic spot is blocked, they may retreat rather than move elsewhere.
As Palo Alto wrestles with solutions, any delay can be lifesaving, Blaustein said. "Most people don't really want to die."
|
Send this story
Print this story
