Barriers on TO bridge saving lives
Bloor Viaduct solution worth considering on Burgoyne Bridge, psychiatrist suggests
Barriers along the sides of a Toronto bridge are saving the lives of six people every year, says psychiatrist Dr. Mark Sinyor.
Installing similar devices on Burgoyne Bridge would likely do the same in St. Catharines, says Sinyor, an expert in suicide prevention working at Sunnybrook Hospital.
“We know now from decades of research, including since the Bloor Street Viaduct (was erected), that suicidal crises are often fleeting, and the difference between life and death can often be something as simple as not having the means available at the moment,” he says.
“The Bloor Viaduct suicide barrier has almost certainly saved a number of lives — we estimate about six per year — since it was put up (in 2003). If people in St. Catharines are thinking of the same intervention or similar intervention, I think it’s something they should give some careful thought to.”
More than a dozen people participated in a vigil on Burgoyne Bridge Monday night, where two people died in early October.
Public concern about the recent deaths led to the establishment of a suicide prevention working group, which includes representatives of Niagara Region, the city, emergency responders and metal health agencies who are now reviewing suicide prevention strategies, including adding barriers to the bridge.
City council will consider a motion at next week’s meeting calling for the addi-
tion of suicide prevention measures at the span, such as netting.
Sinyor says “data from Toronto and throughout the world has really shown that barriers at common sites have been quite effective at preventing suicide.”
He says barriers are an important component of suicide prevention strategies but should be combined with additional efforts — such as ensuring people know they were installed “because we care and because no one has to die by suicide.”
St. Catharines residents have taken steps to show they care, leaving notes and messages of hope on the bridge recently.
Sinyor led two studies into the effectiveness of barriers installed on the Bloor Street Viaduct in
2003 over the Don Valley Parkway — at the time ranked second to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for the number of deaths that occurred there.
In the first of Sinyor’s studies, published in 2010, researchers found that there was no change in overall rates and the suicide rates at other bridges only increased.
However, he says a second longterm study published in June 2017 showed much different results.
“When we looked at it in the long term the barrier was quite effective at preventing suicides, not only at that location but in lowering suicide rates across Toronto,” he says.
Sinyor suspects a reason for the disparity between the two studies “was probably because there were a number of very problematic media reports that had come out around the time in Toronto that essentially said suicide is inevitable and these sorts of things don’t work.”
“It was really unfortunate and something I think in 2018 would never have been published,” he says, adding those reports supported common myths about suicide rather than working to dispel them.
Sinyor says conditions that lead to suicide, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, “are all treatable.”
“There is hope and they should reach out.”