10
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Securing a suicide hot spot: effects of a safety net at the Bern Muenster Terrace.

      Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior
      Humans, Incidence, Suicide, statistics & numerical data, Switzerland, epidemiology

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          The city of Bern has a high percentage of suicides by jumping (28.6%). Related to other local hotspots, the highest number of deaths (mean 2.5 per year) is found at the Muenster Terrace in the old city. In 1998, after a series of suicides, a safety net was built to prevent people from leaping from the terrace and to avoid further traumatization of people living in the street below. We analyzed the numbers of suicides by jumping before and after the installation of the net. We also assessed the number of media reports referring to this suicide method. After the installation of the net no suicides occurred from the terrace. The number of people jumping from all high places in Bern was significantly lower compared to the years before, indicating that no immediate shift to other nearby jumping sites took place. Furthermore, we found a moderate correlation between the number of media reports and the number of persons resident outside Bern committing suicide by jumping from high places in the city.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          16178698
          10.1521/suli.2005.35.4.460

          Chemistry
          Humans,Incidence,Suicide,statistics & numerical data,Switzerland,epidemiology
          Chemistry
          Humans, Incidence, Suicide, statistics & numerical data, Switzerland, epidemiology

          Comments

          Comment on this article