Advocate triumphantly reflects on fight for Golden Gate Bridge suicide nets

The Golden Gate Bridge has finally erected a suicide barrier after years of inertia, controversy, and opposition, with local, state and federal officials commemorating its completion earlier this month .

Nearly 50,000 people died by suicide in the U.S. in 2022, the last year for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published provisional estimates . It was the highest total ever recorded in the country, according to the agency.

The Golden Gate Bridge is unfortunately synonymous with suicide. Since the completion of the bridge in 1937, this “lethal beauty” has been responsible for approximately 2,000 deaths, counting only bodies recovered. The bridge is infamously known as one of the deadliest suicide sites in the world, averaging two or three deaths a month.

This high incidence of Golden Gate Bridge suicides was perplexing. It was a local problem, and one we could control. How could nothing have been done?

As a psychiatrist working as the chief of an in-patient unit 4 miles from the bridge, I knew I had to do something about it.

The work began as a six-person working group I formed in 2005, made up of suicide-prevention experts, physicians, nonprofit leaders, and government officials. The goal was simple: Convince the 19-member Bridge Board of Directors to erect the barrier.

When we began nearly 20 years ago, 75% of polled San Franciscans opposed the barrier . In a city as liberal as San Francisco that number seemed remarkable.

We had to counter arguments and misconceptions that jumpers would just go elsewhere, that they are exercising free will, or that they are all mental patients. Other opponents focused on the cost of a barrier, or its aesthetic impact.

Our task force attempted to meet in person or by phone with all the bridge board members. We set up a speaker’s bureau and spoke at hospitals, schools, rotary clubs and churches. We wrote op-eds and lobbied the media. We attended the regular Friday morning board meeting. We went to the state capital to speak with legislators.

At the start of the campaign, I was given a special sense of mission when a psychiatrist colleague’s son suicided from the bridge. Jonathan was an 18-year-old student at the French American School. He had already been accepted to college. He was a procrastinator, and the night before his suicide he had not completed his assignment on the Challenger space shuttle disaster. He believed that his parents were upset. The following day he took public transportation to the bridge, paced up and down, and jumped at the end of the day.

In my work at St. Francis Memorial Hospital , I have interviewed more than 60 individuals taken off the bridge.

The common belief is that the bridge is a magnet attracting jumpers for its beauty. I found that two-thirds of the jumpers I interviewed told me that they came to the bridge because it was easy and a sure way to suicide.

Yet the most common misconception about bridge suicide is that jumpers, if prevented, would go elsewhere. Suicides tend to pick places and methods with which they are familiar.

A pivotal 1978 study by psychologist Richard Seiden followed individuals taken by the California Highway Patrol from the bridge over a 25-year period showed that, at the end of the study, 94% were still alive or died from natural causes. They did not go elsewhere.

The bridge remained a compelling structure to lure those experiencing a chance moment of desperation to easily end their lives.

Though the science and facts behind suicide proved the point handedly, the fight for the barrier was ultimately won when the families of the jumpers joined us at the Friday meetings. They held up pictures of their loved ones and spoke of their losses.

The board could not fail to be moved. I recall seeing a Marin County supervisor coming to tears. It would not have been possible without their bravery.

Incrementally, the barrier campaign moved forward. Between 2005 and today, a small group of dedicated individuals worked tirelessly, overseeing design engineering and environmental impact studies, public debates, special task forces and, finally, consensus.

Construction began in 2018 . Survivors with whom I have spoken are grateful to be alive, but perhaps even more importantly, family members who lost those that mattered most are relieved to finally be met with some closure.

Ken Baldwin, who survived the jump, sent me this statement: “I suicided in August, 1985. I jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. ... I just looked over the water to the city, and it was beautiful. I felt that this was the right time and place to kill myself. I vaulted over the railing. The last thing I saw leave the Bridge was my hands. It was at that time that I realized what a stupid thing I was doing. It is incredible how quickly I decided I wanted to live when I realized that I was going to lose my wife, my daughter, and the rest of my family.”

“There are two parts to my life,” he added. “Before the jump and after the jump. I am the luckiest guy in the world.”

Thanks to the hard work of the many government agencies, officials, advocacy groups, and most importantly, the families of those who we lost, there will never have to be an “after the jump” story like Ken’s again.

Dr. Mel Blaustein is a San Francisco psychiatrist and a longtime advocate for suicide-prevention efforts on the Golden Gate Bridge.