Thorney wrote:If someone wants to end it, they will, putting a gun to your head is a not a cry for help.
Many years ago I lived in north Colchester. A mile or two north there was the very busy A12 Colchester bypass dual carriageway in a deep cutting flanked north and south by a pair of NHS mental hospitals with a footbridge over the main road between them. The inevitable followed, so the bridge ended up being suicide proofed like a fenced in tunnel.
At the same time, I was a daily rail commuter to London. One of the most regular causes of serious delay, especially in November/December, was suicide with people walking out of cover onto the track just ahead of an approaching train. Very messy! Close off one method and another arises. Of course, we could stop people walking on footpaths near roads, rivers, and railways or have suicide marshals checking their states of mind!
Where I now live (York), the authorities and some civic bodies have become obsessed with drownings in the River Ouse that flows through the city centre. Most of these are summer 'accidents' from idiots who having imbibed large quantities of alcoholic drink think they can fly off the Ouse bridges, run their parapets safely, or demonstrate Olympic games class high-diving skills. However, some are sad desperate people whose inquests subsequently give suicide verdicts. They avoid the city centre bridges and quietly enter the water from secluded unlit spots where nobody sees them. Every time we have this, the call goes out for the river to be virtually walled-in and isolated from the human population the length and breadth of the city, likewise for the bridges to be idiot proofed like the Colchester footbridge.