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Traffic was snarled on Aurora for about two hours this morning, as police closed lanes to try to talk down a man threatening to jump from the Aurora Bridge. The P-I says he is in his mid-30s, fell 150 feet into a parking lot, and survived the fall. He was alive when taken to the hospital--probably Harborview, we imagine. This local blogger saw the traffic jam and wondered how hard it would be to justify increasing mental health coverage, given the cost of the stalled commute. But we seem more likely to build a fence instead.
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In Woodinville there's a hole-in-the-wall charcuterie named Bill The Butcher which has the most outl
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so we should increase mental health funding until people stop committing suicide?
how much would we have to spend to cause a 50% reduction in aurora bridge deaths?
I'd speculate that -no amount- of additional health services would accomplish the same reduction of jumpers that a fence would.
I'm not making an argument against more mental health services - it's just a very nebulous approach to the very objective problem of bodies falling from the sky.
it's kind of like saying we shouldn't waste money cleaning up an oil spill because the real money should be spent on renewable energy sources.
I take your point, arrogantb. Actually, I'm not against a fence--bodies falling out of the sky isn't simply a mental health issue. It's not safe for anyone. But obviously the suicidal can simply migrate to other unfenced sites, so I would hope that whatever is done to help forestall suicides, it isn't just a fence.
Update: he died.
> But obviously the suicidal can simply migrate to other unfenced sites, so I would hope that whatever is done to help forestall suicides, it isn't just a fence.
research suggests they generally don't do this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06suicide-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
"Except the opponents were wrong. A study conducted five years after the Ellington barrier went up showed that while suicides at the Ellington were eliminated completely, the rate at the Taft barely changed, inching up from 1.7 to 2 deaths per year. What’s more, over the same five-year span, the total number of jumping suicides in Washington had decreased by 50 percent, or the precise percentage the Ellington once accounted for."
although the libertarian in me says to leave things as is. people underneath the bridge hopefully know what they're getting into - and certainly people have the right to kill themselves.
although the libertarian in me says to leave things as is. people underneath the bridge hopefully know what they're getting into - and certainly people have the right to kill themselves.
People under the bridge should know better? That's crazy talk.
And, I would have said that I agree that people have the right to kill themselves. It seems like a reasonable position, but then I watched The Bridge. It's pretty creepy and apparently there's at least some controversy, but if even a few of those jumpers are like the survivor they interviewed those people didn't choose to jump any more than I choose to get something to eat when I'm hungry enough. People shouldn't be allowed to kill themselves when they have obviously have an essentially mechanical problem with their brain causing them to behave the way they are.
There may be people who are in a position to rationally decide that killing themselves is reasonable, but people who walk out onto the 99 bridge and decide to jump because their marriage is failing or today their life is just "too hard" are not in that position.