prevention design

A new NYT piece on the suicide prevention nets that now line the sides of the Golden Gate Bridge. I hope the folks framing assisted suicide as a simple matter of autonomous choice take note:

Critics have long wondered if steering the suicidal away from the Golden Gate Bridge merely sends them elsewhere to take their own life. Net proponents do not think so.

A 1978 study by Richard Seiden, at the University of California, Berkeley, tracked 515 people who, between 1937 and 1971, went to the Golden Gate Bridge intending to jump but had been persuaded not to. It found that 94 percent were still alive or had died of natural causes.

“Suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Mr. Seiden concluded.