(Oct. 15, 2014) Kevin Briggs recalls the day in 2007 when he was unable to talk a jumper back from the ledge of the Golden Gate Bridge in an interview with Gregg Zoroya for USA Today (“The cost of not caring: The suicide crisis,” Oct. 9).
Briggs, a California Highway Patrol officer, has talked many potential jumpers back from the ledge of San Francisco’s most famous bridge and is one of the searing stories presented in USA Today’s examination of suicide as a consequence of letting people with mental illness fall through the cracks of our fragmented treatment system.
The lifetime risk of suicide among individuals with schizophrenia is about five percent and about 10 to 15 percent for people with bipolar disorder, according to a Treatment Advocacy Center backgrounder.
“The country seems almost complacent with this staggering death toll,” writes Zoroya. “But the suicide rate keeps climbing.”
My son would be alive today if there had been a way to keep him medicated, Pat Milam said. Milam’s son killed himself in 2011 with a homemade explosive and frequently refused treatment for his mental illness.
But most lawmakers are not interested public policies that would provide treatment for people at risk for suicide. “If the public doesn’t think you can do anything about it, they won’t support it,” said Alex Crosby, a CDC epidemiologist. (HR 3717 does provide a glimmer of hope for the most severely ill).
“The nation must find a way to treat despair before the only resort is a police officer begging someone not to jump,” Briggs told USA Today.
We couldn’t agree more.
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