The Final Leap (32 page)

In 2001, researchers at the University of Houston studied 153 people who made a nonlethal suicide attempt. What they found was that the vast majority—87 percent—thought about suicide for fewer than eight hours before acting. In fact, for 70 percent their attempt occurred within one hour of making the decision. Most astonishing of all, 24 percent said that they attempted within
five minutes
of deciding to kill themselves. In other words, the interval between thought and action for most of the group was only an hour, and for one out of four people almost no time elapsed between the impulse to kill themselves and the attempt. Clearly, suicide was something that most people in the study gave little thought to despite its enormous consequences.

Examining how people die by suicide can be as important in preventing it as understanding why people resort to suicide. It may lack the weight of existential study—Albert Camus referred to suicide as “the only serious philosophical problem” while Shakespeare's Hamlet poses the question that's at the heart of suicide: “To be or not to be”—at the same time, a study of methods used in suicides has the benefit of being concrete. We may never know for sure why a person takes his or her life, but we can determine with near 100 percent certainty the method used. Gunshot, poison, hanging, jumping, drowning, stabbing, cutting—each is unmistakable.

Worldwide, the leading method of suicide is hanging. People don't always have access to a gun, medication, motor vehicle, cliff, tall building, or bridge, but they can fashion a noose out of just about anything. In China, where pesticides are readily available for agricultural purposes, poison is the top choice. In Norway, which is surrounded by water, a disproportionate number of people kill themselves by drowning. For many years, the most popular method of suicide in Sri Lanka was jumping into a well. Then indoor plumbing was introduced and wells became obsolete. Today, the leading method in the country is pesticide poisoning.

In the United States, where the number of firearms exceeds the number of people, guns are used in 60 percent of all suicides. States with the highest suicide rates—Nevada, Alaska, Idaho, Arizona, and New Mexico—are those with a high percentage of males and liberal gun laws. The reason why more males die by suicide than females even though females make more attempts is because males tend to use a firearm, which almost always is fatal, while females historically have overdosed, which is less lethal and offers more opportunities for intervention.

The choice of method rarely is random. Usually it's related to the means that's most available to a person. Police officers shoot themselves because they have ready access to a firearm. Physicians overdose because they can obtain lethal quantities of drugs easily. Prisoners hang themselves because the only means available to them are bed sheets, shirts, and shoelaces. In
November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide
, George Howe Colt noted three unusual deaths: one man killed himself by jumping into a vat of beer, a second man locked himself into a high-altitude test chamber, and a third man lay in front of a steamroller. The means they resorted to were explicable, however, once one learned that the first man was a brewer, the second was an Air Force technician, and the third was a construction worker.

“It takes a tremendous amount of energy to figure out how you're going to kill yourself,” one woman told Colt. She considered various options, dismissing them either because death wasn't certain or she didn't want loved ones to find her body. Had she lived near San Francisco, her choice would have been simple— the Golden Gate Bridge. Easy access, no mess, and death a near-certainty. As it was, she parked her car away from home and tried to inhale carbon monoxide. She was found alive, though unconscious, and revived at a hospital. Afterward, she said, “I kept thinking about what would be easiest for everyone else. Of course, the easiest thing would have been if I lived.”

Well-known poet Anne Sexton also resorted to carbon monoxide, killing herself in 1974 at age forty-five. Several years before her death she wrote a poem titled “Wanting to Die.” It contains these lines: “Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.”

The tools, in the case of the Golden Gate Bridge, are simple. No firearms, no pills, no motor vehicles, not even rope or a razor blade. Just hoist yourself over the short railing and in the blink of an eye you're gone. That's what Lois Anne Houston did. Even though she was seventy-five years old and overweight, she was able to surmount the railing without difficulty.

The challenge for those who study suicide, as well as for care-givers and survivors, is to understand as much as possible about what drives someone to the edge—and beyond. The more we learn, the less taboo the subject becomes and the more our misper-ceptions disappear. This isn't easy when funding for suicide studies is relatively paltry. In 2010, the National Institutes of Health spent $3.1 billion for AIDS research and 1.3 percent of that—$40 million—for suicide research, even though twice as many people in the United States die by suicide as from AIDS.

Thomas Joiner concludes his book
Myths about Suicide
this way: “We need to get it in our heads that suicide is not easy, painless, cowardly, selfish, vengeful, self-masterful, or rash … that it is partly genetic and influenced by mental disorders, themselves often agonizing; and that it is preventable (e.g. through means restriction like bridge barriers) and treatable.… Once we get all that in our heads at last, we need to let it lead our hearts.”

 

 

Anyone who is feeling suicidal or worried about a loved one who might be suicidal can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The Lifeline consists of 150 independent crisis centers across the United States, and calls are routed automatically to the center nearest the caller. Licensed professionals and highly trained volunteers answer the calls 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, providing confidential counseling and emotional support. The Lifeline also has an extensive Web site.

 

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

800-273-TALK (8255)

800-SUICIDE (784-2433)

888-628-9454 (Spanish)

800-799-4TTY (4889; Hearing Impaired)

www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

 

The following organizations promote research, education, and training programs to understand and prevent suicide. In addition, the American Association of Suicidology certifies crisis centers across the country while the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a public policy and advocacy division that was enhanced when the Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN) was merged into it. All three organizations publish a variety of information as well as maintain comprehensive Web sites.

 

American Association of Suicidology

5221 Wisconsin Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20015

202-237-2280

www.suicidology.org

 

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

120 Wall Street, 22
^nd
Floor

New York, NY 10005

212-363-3500

www.afsp.org

 

Suicide Prevention Resource Center

55 Chapel Street

Newton, MA 02458

877-438-7772

www.sprc.org

 

The following is a list of 1,200 people known to have killed themselves by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge through 2010. The list is comprehensive, but by no means complete. Individuals whose deaths were confirmed but whose bodies weren't identified are excluded. Also excluded are people suspected of jumping but whose jumps weren't witnessed and whose bodies haven't ever been found. The latter includes Leonard Branzuela, Casey Brooks, and Matthew Whitmer, who are discussed in this book, as well as hundreds of others (the Marin County coroner included these suicides in the above table starting in 2006, which accounts for the increase in the past five years). In addition, this list omits the names of the three children under the age of five who were murdered when their parents threw them over the short railing, then followed them to their deaths.

The list was compiled by Dayna Whitmer, Matthew Whitmer's mother. She created it from newspaper articles, archives of Malcolm Glover (a longtime newspaper reporter in San Francisco, now deceased), and names released by the Marin County coroner's office. Because the San Francisco coroner's office doesn't separate Golden Gate Bridge jumps from other falls, no information is available on jumpers whose bodies were autopsied in San Francisco.

I consulted with colleagues and did a lot of soul searching before deciding to include the list in this book. Although death records are public information, victims' families haven't consented to their loved ones being identified. In the end, I decided that the list puts a face on bridge suicides in a way that no statistic can. It's like reading the names of soldiers on the Vietnam Memorial. Also, excluding it would perpetuate the stigma of suicide as something not to acknowledge or talk about.

This list is a memorial to those lost. Publishing it may help people understand the extent of the tragedy, a tragedy that continues uninterrupted today.