Bloor barrier hasn’t affected suicide rate, study finds
July 6, 2010
Wendy Gillis
STAFF REPORTER
Barriers installed along the Bloor Viaduct have prevented suicides at the site, but people are finding other places to jump, a study has found.
Before the installation of the steel barriers, the viaduct was a “notorious suicide magnet” — second only to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, says Mark Sinyor, the lead author and resident doctor in psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
The study, which is being published in Wednesday’s British Medical Journal, found that between 1993 and 2001, an average of 10 people per year ended their lives by jumping off the viaduct. But from July 2003 to 2007 — after the barriers were installed — there were no suicides at the site.
However, the researchers also found that the barriers did not decrease the overall rate of suicides by jumping.
Prior to the barriers’ construction in 2003, an average of 60 people plunged to their deaths by jumping off various structures throughout the city each year. After 2003, the city continued to see 60 suicides-by-jumping a year; the only difference was that none of those occurred at the Bloor St. site.
“Certainly it does appear that at least some people who would have otherwise jumped at the Bloor St. Viaduct did so at other bridges,” says Sinyor. “The dream scenario would have been to have gone from 60 to 50 in the jumping suicides, but that number stayed exactly the same.”
Sinyor says his study shows that barriers are only one piece of the puzzle in preventing suicides.
“They are not the whole story. In order to really prevent suicides, we need to have more comprehensive programs to educate the public about suicide and increase access to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.”
Sinyor says he fears his study will cause some people to conclude that suicide is inevitable, and argues that there is always a way out.
“Things that cause suicide, like depression, anxiety, psychosis, addictions — they’re treatable. And the message we need to send to people thinking about suicide is there is hope,” he says.
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