An Edmonton View: Should Media Cover Suicides?

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An Edmonton View: Should Media Cover Suicides?

Postby jon » Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:49 pm

Yes, this article is specifically about Edmonton's High Level Bridge, but it does touch upon a subject debated here a few years back: a decades long self-imposed ban on reporting suicides from that bridge. And other locations like it across the country.

It is a long article, but I felt it could easily be taken out of context if only some of it was shown here.

The 'Black Nightmare': Edmonton's High Level Bridge a magnet for the desperate and distressed
For a century Edmonton’s beautiful and terrible High Level Bridge has proven to be an irresistible magnet for the distraught
By Cailynn Klingbeil and Otiena Ellwand
Edmonton Journal
August 16, 2014 11:23 AM

Tad Hargrave sat on a park bench in the darkness of a chilly March night, a moment of quiet reflection before walking home across the High Level Bridge. It was late evening and the west pedestrian path appeared deserted. Halfway across the bridge Hargrave, a 38-year-old marketing coach, saw another person, standing on the other side of the black railing, readying to jump to the frozen North Saskatchewan River below.

EDMONTON - Edmonton’s High Level Bridge opened in June 1913 after three years of construction to workmen’s cheers and citizens’ hurrahs as the first train crossed the bridge. “North and South Side Now Linked by High Level,” proclaimed an Edmonton Journal headline. The new artery joined the cities on either side, playing a key role in their amalgamation, the lifeblood between the riverbanks. But from the start, the bridge built to connect has inadvertently served as a fatal exit.

It’s not known how many people have died by suicide in the High Level Bridge’s 101-year history, or how many people have been saved. In 1945, the Journal reported 10 deaths in 10 years, and by 1949 at least 15 people were known to have jumped. More recent statistics vary depending on who you talk to: Alberta’s chief medical examiner recorded four deaths in 2013 and six in 2012, while Edmonton Police Service recorded no suicides from the High Level Bridge in 2013 and one in 2012.

Journal archives contain numerous articles detailing jumps, falls and plunges: “The suicide victim uttered no cry as his body twisted over in the air a few times”; “A wrist watch stopped at 11:05, indicated that at that hour the woman had plunged to her death”; “A young man left a verbal message for his wife — ‘tell her I love her’ — then jumped.”

A handful of accounts detail survivals from the 46-metre fall. In 1992, a 17-year-old girl was found shivering, bruised and frightened, but otherwise unharmed, when fire department rescuers reached her standing on ice.

The accounts describe a tragic toll, but over the years the bridge’s dark history has been rarely acknowledged.

An alderman’s suggestion in 1986 to put up signs asking suicidal people not to jump was deemed goofy. In 2002, a local crisis centre installed “There is Help” signs at the bridge’s north and south entrances, but they were vandalized and later removed.

Suicide from the bridge was the subject of a 2010 film that begins with filmmaker Trevor Anderson’s voice: “It’s where people who live in Edmonton go when we’re finally ready to kill ourselves.”

There are no memorials on the bridge to the men and women who have died. Without first recognizing the tragedy, it’s difficult to address what brings people to this place and how to prevent future loss.

The two strangers stood in the dark on opposite sides of the railing. “Dude, don’t come any closer.” Hargrave stopped about three metres from the man. “OK,” he said. The man’s arms were slung over the railing, hanging on. “Just go away, man. I don’t want you to see this. Turn around and walk away,” he said. Hargrave did not move.

After the talk before the city committee and all the interviews with the media were done, after he brought a mock-up of the current railing on the High Level Bridge and demonstrated how easy it is to scale, Dan Klemke drove under what he calls the “black nightmare” and parked his car beside the Royal Glenora Club. He sat there for a couple hours, thinking and praying.

Living in St. Albert, the High Level Bridge had barely been on his radar, though Klemke says it’s “tribal knowledge” the bridge is where people go when they’re in distress. He never anticipated one of those people would be his wife.

Marilyn Klemke jumped off the bridge Jan. 2, 2013. A few days earlier, she was prescribed a new sleeping medication. Suicidal ideation was a side-effect.

Since then, Klemke has urged city council to examine suicide prevention barriers on the bridge. Instead of shying away, he has stepped into the limelight. Two months after Marilyn died, Klemke, the chief executive officer of a local mining company, asked former mayor Stephen Mandel what could be done.

Klemke was surprised the topic hadn’t been broached in recent memory. The bridge is a problem, he recalls Mandel saying.

____

Height and accessibility make the bridge a magnet for suicidal people, said Dr. Michael Trew, chief addiction and mental health officer with Alberta Health.

A number of factors “swirl together” to draw people to the bridge. “We know that for impulsive acts, having something that stands out, that seems readily available like the High Level Bridge, that’s more likely to invite action to that impulse,” he said.

Other cities facing similar issues have erected suicide prevention barriers, but reviews are mixed.

In 2003, Toronto installed the Luminous Veil, a suicide barrier along the Bloor Street Viaduct. There haven’t been any suicides there since, but a 2010 study published in the British Medical Journal found Toronto’s suicide rate remained unchanged.

This June, officials in San Francisco approved $76 million for suicide prevention nets on the Golden Gate Bridge. Since 1937, it’s estimated 1,600 people have taken their lives from the landmark.

Klemke remains determined something positive will come out of his wife’s death. “I am standing up on this issue now,” he said. “I will not sit down until it’s addressed.”

Hargrave introduced himself to the man standing on the other side of the railing.

“My name’s Tad, what’s your name?”

The man didn’t answer.

Finally, he spoke: “I can’t do this.”

“That’s good, just hang on,” Hargrave said. “My name’s Tad, what’s your name?”


Early newspaper reports treated suicide as a factual occurrence that needed to be shared. Who died and how was reported in great detail in the early 20th century, said Gemma Richardson, a University of Western Ontario PhD candidate studying how Canadian newspapers cover suicide.

That changed in the 1970s and 1980s, when a series of studies linked media coverage to suicide rates. It sent a chill through newsrooms, Richardson said, and that, coupled with the fact suicide was removed from the Criminal Code of Canada in 1972, led reporters to scale back coverage.

“More newsrooms stopped covering suicide as it was looked at as a health issue, something private, not a criminal thing,” Richardson said.

Newer studies discredit the contagion theory, finding that when media mostly stopped covering suicide, there was no clear drop in deaths. Although Canadian media now addresses teen suicide, the overall rate among teens remains stable.

Not just the media is discussing the topic more readily. In 2006, a senate standing committee published a landmark report about the state of mental health care and addictions services in Canada.

Ione Challborn, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Edmonton region, said Out of the Shadows at Last started a conversation among different levels of government and organizations. It was also the catalyst for the Mental Health Commission of Canada whose mandate is to provide an “ongoing national focus on mental health issues.”

“Suicide is a leading cause of death,” Challborn said. “We believe it is a preventable death and so it is one we should be paying a lot of attention to.”

Statistics Canada ranked suicide as the 9th leading cause of death in Canada in 2011, behind cancer, heart disease and stroke and ahead of homicides and fatal car crashes. There were 3,728 deaths by suicide in 2011.

The suicide rate in Alberta has declined over the past two decades, but it remains ranked between second and fourth place among Canadian provinces, said Trew. In 2012, the most recent year for which Alberta Health statistics are available, suicide was at its lowest rate since 1983.

A comprehensive look at the number of people jumping from the High Level Bridge has not been undertaken, said Kris Andreychuk, supervisor of community safety with the city, who worked on a report about barrier options for city council. “Depending on who you talk to, you’re going to get different numbers,” he said.

If a body is found beside the bridge or in Beverly, downstream from the High Level, for example, it may not be counted as a suicide from the bridge. The other problem is that it can take time, sometimes up to two years, to fully investigate a suspected suicide and finalize the cause of death.

Edmonton Police Service records calls for service to the bridge, attempted, and completed suicides. As of August 9, there were 118 calls for service, including 26 suicide attempts and two suicides this year. In 2013, there were 158 calls for service, including 33 suicide attempts and no suicides.

Nancy McCalder, executive director of The Support Network, believes the number of suicides from the bridge is higher than reported. The organization’s 24/7 distress line for the Edmonton region gets more than 12,000 calls a year, more than 30 per cent are suicide-related.

McCalder talks about the pain a suicidal person is experiencing, about their struggle to cope, about what can lead them to think killing themselves is the solution.

“We just don’t talk about (suicide) enough and we need to,” McCalder said. “It’s affecting workplaces, it’s affecting families, it’s affecting everything. We need to start having these conversations.”

As a police car arrived on the bridge, Hargrave continued to encourage the man to hang on to the railing, to life.

“Just hold on,” he said. “Hold on a little tighter.”

The man looked down, his gaze lost in the darkness of the river below.


For first responders, calls to the 755-metre long bridge require careful co-ordination. Members from Edmonton police, Edmonton fire rescue and EMS work together, contending with scores of onlookers and commuters.

When police are dispatched to a call — a passerby spots somebody hoisting themselves over the railing, or a family member calls about a distraught relative on their way to the bridge — patrol officers are typically first on scene.

Officers aim to be as low key and as sensitive as possible. They try to talk with the person, and may cordon off the bridge from pedestrian and vehicle traffic to minimize distractions.

“It really is, for that person, a choice between life and death,” said Acting Sgt. Chris Hunter, who started studying ways to improve safety after responding to numerous calls on the bridge.

The calls are stressful, Hunter said. “You’re talking to (the suicidal person) and you’re getting them to come up with their own solution of why to come over. That’s part of the pressure: how do I find the place in their life right now that they can hear life speaking rather than death speaking?”

Some calls are resolved in minutes, others can take hours and require EPS’s crisis negotiator unit. Firefighters may be deployed for river rescue or body recovery.

Old Strathcona firefighters must drive to their boat storage site in Rossdale. While crews can launch within three minutes, the drive to Rossdale can take ten minutes or longer. This system creates “an unacceptable delay,” said Edmonton Fire Rescue Chief Ken Block.

The calls, especially body recovery missions, can be emotionally intense.

“It can often be hours, days or even weeks after the fact before the real, full impact of what was experienced is felt,” Block said.

In some cases first responders are not notified until it’s too late, after someone is seen jumping.

But if the person contemplating jumping hesitates, police may have time to intervene. If the person is talked off, EMS and police will take them to a hospital for assessment and help.

“Just hold on man. Just keep holding on,” Hargrave said.

“I can’t do this,” the man said over and over.

He repeated those words as he leaned out, farther away from the railing, from the police officers, from the stranger who stopped to help, from the world.

He let go.


There are many reasons why people choose to let go. Half or more could be diagnosed as depressed, said Trew, with Alberta Health. Some have problems with substance abuse. When those two things combine, people may be more impulsive. Other factors include loss of employment, housing, relationships, economic security and isolation from what creates meaning in their lives.

While women are more likely to attempt suicide, men are more likely to die because they tend to use more violent means.

Men between the ages of 35 and 55 are most at risk, followed by men under the age of 25.

“As a community, if we want to respond, we need to look for ways to make it safe for men to talk about how they feel,” Trew said.

____

The Support Network’s McCalder believes in addition to making the bridge safer, more resources need to go into prevention. “Let’s get to people before they even get to the bridge,” she said.

Mental health issues and suicide prevention are not funded like cancer or heart disease, a fact that’s apparent to front line organizations. The Support Network must fundraise 50 per cent of the 24/7 distress line’s $500,000 budget.

Police officers also witness the strains at the emergency room, where they say sometimes it’s too busy for suicidal people to receive proper psychiatric care. Unless the suicidal person is really aware of what’s going on and determined to get better, there may not be much followup.

Challborn, with the Canadian Mental Health Association, adds that some people don’t have supportive family or friends, so they end up getting released without support.

“There aren’t enough beds in hospital for somebody to come and stay for a period of time and get stabilized,” she said. “It’s a struggle.”

Hargrave watched as the man fell. There was nothing else he could do. He looked away right before the end. That’s when he heard the man’s body hit the ice, a sickening sound. It was so loud.

Death by suicide is a “complicated loss,” said Trew, in which family and friends often feel an intense combination of loss, anger, and shame.

“People tend to be silent about death by suicide that has touched them, and so it becomes like many secrets that tend to trouble people in a very hidden way,” he said.

At The Support Network, Ofelia Leon helps people experiencing a loss to suicide.

“People may not be familiar with such intense emotions,” Leon said. “They have to see those validated, to see it’s normal.”

When events occur in a public place, such as the High Level Bridge, the suicide attempt or death may also traumatize witnesses and first responders.

Bruno Mercier was biking across the bridge’s west pathway last year when he saw a man climb over the railing.

Mercier screamed, “What the heck are you doing?” A woman got out of a passing car to help.

For about 45 minutes, Mercier and the woman talked to the man, who said little.

“The one thing I thought was important was I can’t leave him,” Mercier said.

Police officers arrived and talked to the man for about two minutes — Mercier didn’t hear what they said — and convinced him to climb back over the railing.

Mercier described the situation as “very emotional,” compounded by the fact he was on his way to the Cross Cancer Institute to see his dying father.

“I always wonder what I’d do different,” Mercier said of the incident. “I don’t see what I could do different, but every time I’m on the bridge, I think about it.”

Leon oversees The Support Network’s suicide grief support program for caregivers looking after someone contemplating suicide and people who have lost a loved one to suicide. The program holds an annual memorial event and potlucks.

“The community events break the isolation people can feel,” Leon said.

For friends of Louise Veillard, a 26-year-old woman who jumped off the High Level Bridge in May, gathering for an outdoor potluck and ceremony near the bridge was an opportunity to honour Veillard’s life and acknowledge how she died.

“The choice Lou made is not shameful or a secret,” said Veillard’s partner, Melanie Lintott. The program handed out at the ceremony was adorned with a drawing of the High Level Bridge and colourful flowers. A pile of pins with a picture of a bunny said, “It’s OK not to be OK.”

Standing in a large circle in Constable Ezio Faraone Park, people were invited to smudge, an aboriginal tradition believed to cleanse the body, mind and spirit so healing can begin.

The police officers asked Hargrave if he could make a statement, and drove him home. Later that night two people from victim services came to Hargrave’s house. People don’t always stop, they told him, they keep moving, unsure of what to do or say.

“How many people go alone, with no one noticing?” Hargrave wonders.


Nearly a year after city councillors voted to study securing the High Level Bridge to reduce suicides, a new council will convene Monday to make a decision about the bridge’s future.

In February, council’s community services committee approved installing signs on the bridge about how to reach help and spending about $20,000 to install four call boxes with direct service to 911 and the 24/7 distress line. The committee also asked for additional input from mental health experts and more details about three barrier options.

But will fences or phones fix a strained mental health care system?

“I don’t know what the answer is to this problem, unless there’s someone there to help when you call and a system to provide comprehensive treatment and follow up,” said Lori Assheton-Smith, whose brother Glenn died after jumping from the High Level Bridge in September 2013. Family unsuccessfully sought help for Glenn many times in the five weeks before his death. Each time they went to the hospital’s emergency department Glenn, who expressed suicidal thoughts, was not admitted.

“In our case, what we found was those supports just were not there,” she said.

In January 2011, seven years after Eugene Cormier was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he left Alberta Hospital and jumped off the bridge. His sister Gina Cormier said having phones on the bridge might help people like her brother, who she believes became more hopeless, isolated and scared in his illness.

On Thursday, the city released a report suggesting barriers can decrease suicide rates over all and will not simply move the problem elsewhere. The barrier options would cost between $1.1 million and $7.4 million. Proposals would leave the existing guard rails in place, and add either a new chain-link fence, horizontal tension cable or a new vertical stainless steel tension cable with a steel frame.

It’s hoped the barriers would create a moment of reconsideration for people in crisis.

The bridge already underwent a major change July 1, when 60,000 programmable LED lights were installed across the span as part of Light the Bridge, a $2.5-million crowdfunded project. More than 300 businesses and about 10,700 people donated to the campaign.

One of those people was Klemke, widow of Marilyn, who said the project helps turn the bridge from a “monument to tragedy” to a place of celebration. But he’s unsure if more lights will stop suicidal people, such as his wife, who jumped just after lunchtime.

Andreychuk, with the city, is mindful many considerations must be made before suicide barriers are installed.

“Everyone has an opinion on the bridge and it’s very complex, and I think that’s at the heart of the issue,” Andreychuk said.

For now, consensus exists on the importance of council finally broaching the difficult topic.

“Just the conversation that’s occurring is a positive one,” said Block, the fire chief. “The more conversations that we have around mental health, the more understood it is and the more people realize that any of us can experience a mental health issue at some point during our lives.”

Every time Hargrave crosses the High Level Bridge, he thinks about the man who jumped.

Now he checks the other side of the railing, watching for people who may be in distress.

“I’m always looking,” he said. “I notice if somebody is just standing there, looking down at the water. I want to stop and ask them if they’re OK.”


On a recent warm summer evening the High Level bridge teems with activity, belying the bridge’s tragic reputation. Traffic thumps along as joggers, bicyclists and pedestrians crowd the west and east walkways, some pausing to take in the view.

Cormier used to love riding her bike on the bridge, the spot “where the city joins,” an icon linking north to south.

“To me, I saw it as a place to be free,” she said.

After her brother Eugene jumped to his death, her feelings changed.

“I had more anger and hatred toward an inanimate thing than I ever thought was possible,” she said.

Three years after her brother’s death, Cormier was riding the LRT when she looked up at the High Level Bridge, at the spot where her brother spent the last moment of his life.

“I looked out and it just looked so pretty. It always looks so pretty, that view to me,” she said. “My heart felt like it was free again.”
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Re: An Edmonton View: Should Media Cover Suicides?

Postby Tom Jeffries » Sat Aug 16, 2014 4:13 pm

While on the air - should we have someone in trouble on the Lion's Gate, or Burrard, or the Second Narrows, we were told explicitly to refer to the closure as "a police incident'. We were absolutely forbidden to ever mention the S word, or God forbid, Jumper, etc.

The gent that talked the poor soul off that bridge in Edmonton, was incredible. Holy Cow.

I would hope I could be 1/50th as calm and smart as he was. This man is a hero by any definition.

In the Navy we say - Bravo Zulu.

*If you struggle with Depression and are having trouble - reach out - PLEASE. There is absolutely NO SHAME in being depressed. It is a DISEASE of the brain, and there is HOPE, and treatments that WORK.
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Re: An Edmonton View: Should Media Cover Suicides?

Postby jon » Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:19 pm

The barriers for the bridge were just approved a few hours ago by Edmonton City Council.
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Re: An Edmonton View: Should Media Cover Suicides?

Postby Mike Cleaver » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:09 pm

The rule in most newsrooms was (is) that suicides went unreported UNLESS the person was well known, of local or national or international importance or the actual event attracted a large crowd or caused disruptions which could not be ignored.
Most suicides that cause a problem (bridge closure, road closure, other transit stoppage) usually are referred to as "police incidents."
I remember a meeting in Toronto during the last century of all news departments and the TTC about growing numbers of suicides involving subway trains.
A consensus was reached about not reporting those as suicides, only as "service interruptions," the idea of which was not to give ideas to impressionable people.
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Re: An Edmonton View: Should Media Cover Suicides?

Postby jon » Thu Aug 21, 2014 6:23 pm

Mike Cleaver wrote:the idea of which was not to give ideas to impressionable people.

While I do agree with that reasoning, what happened in Edmonton shows the downside of the approach. In a City where most of what happens in City Council is the result of a Critical Mass of Public Outcry, suicides from the High Level Bridge were "out of sight, out of mind". Because they were not reported, I and the vast majority of Edmontonians assumed that the problem had been fixed since it was last reported, by the Alberta Report in a 1975 issue.

As the article mentions, it took a 2010 film on the bridge and its suicides to create that public awareness that was echoed by more recent in-depth articles on the subject in the Edmonton Journal. That, coupled with recent studies that show that making suicide harder often forces enough additional thought to actually prevent the suicide, at least for today.
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