drst:

waffleironbiddingwar:

gogomrbrown:

Tea

Okay, I get it, but y’all have to understand that a lot of people who commit suicide do so on impulse. One day they wake up and decide to take a bus to that very bridge and jump off of it. 

That’s what my cousin did. 

There were no other warning signs. He was doing well in school, he had friends, he was not being bullied, came from a good and loving family, big support system, and one day he got on the bus and instead of going to school he went to the bridge. No letter. No previous attempts. He jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge and ended his life. 

I still miss him. Sometimes I forget he is gone. He was 15. 

When my aunt got the call informing her that he had jumped she said “but what about the net?” The net had been funded/talked about/planned, but never fulfilled. She lobbied for it to be completed. 

If you listen to the stories of the few survivors of attempts to jump off of the bridge they say they regretted it the moment their feet left the edge. As they plunged to their (assumed) deaths they realized they did not actually want to die. They wanted the pain to end, but not to die. 

This is at least a step in the right direction, to give someone who lands on the net a chance to think again about their decision. At the end of the day if someone is going to end their life they are going to end their life, no matter what mental health resources are available to them or what other options they have. It is the ultimate act of free will and you cannot stop someone from doing it short of  catching the signs early and putting them on a temporary psych hold (which brings with it its own consequences). 

So before we shit on an attempt at saving lives, how about we acknowledge that this was done because research has shown that nets or other barriers reduce suicides on bridges. This goes hand-in-hand with beefing up mental health resources. This is a part of prevention and intervention. It is not one or the other, it is both. 

This god damned net may have saved my cousin’s life. It may have taken away the one impulsive act that ended his life. He might have tried to think of another way, one that would have given him away, one that would have produced red flags, or maybe he would have walked to the bridge, jumped into the net, and realized he did not actually die. 

I’ll never know if it would have done any good for him but it sure as hell might do some good for others. Lets take the chance. 

How about both, dammit.