This past week a statistic caught my eye that I found exceptionally profound. It had to do with suicide attempts made by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Perhaps the stat was made more meaningful by my having crossed the Golden Gate a few times when my son and daughter were living out there a few years ago. In part, the statistic was striking because my brother, a Ph.D. psychologist, and I once intended to write a book about suicide, tentatively titled To Heal Broken Wings. We’d each known a few people close to us who took their own lives, or attempted it.
That was near 30 years ago and, sadly, over the course of a lifetime the list has gotten longer.
So what was the stat that so struck me? It was not the quantity of people who have leapt to their death from that bridge, nearly one every 16 days. Rather, it was this. All 29 people who survived their suicide attempts off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge have said they regretted their decision as soon as they jumped.
That’s a mind-blowing statement. Each and every one who survived was immediately regretting their decision to leap to their deaths.
