Olivia Crowther flew all the way to San Francisco from London to leap to her death from the Golden Gate Bridge.

On the morning of June 25 last year, the 23-year-old was seen jumping 220ft (70m) into the water, becoming another statistic in the history of the world’s most lethal bridge.

When he designed the Golden Gate Bridge in 1936, the chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, said: “Suicide from the bridge is neither possible nor probable.” He was wrong.

According to psychiatrists who have released a new study into the fatal attraction of the 1.7-mile span over San Francisco Bay, more than 20 people a year die jumping off it.

Mel Blaustein and Anne Fleming, the authors of the report in the American Journal of Psychiatry, said that because of the suggestible nature of suicide and the powerful association of the Golden Gate Bridge and death, the bridge triggered or amplified suicidal feelings in vulnerable people.

Since it opened in 1937, its official death toll is 1,300, but the authors said that the real figure was probably closer to 2,000: bodies washed out to sea and not recovered, jumpers seen but not found, and unclaimed cars left in the car park, are not counted.

“For some the bridge is an easy site — pedestrian access, a 4ft railing, a bus stop and a parking lot. For others the bridge is a romantic final exit,” Dr Blaustein said. One suicidal patient told him that the bridge was “the only golden way of getting into Heaven”.

Dr Blaustein, medical director at one of the hospitals closest to the bridge, interviewed 63 people who had threatened to throw themselves off. Asked why they chose the bridge, many described it as a “scenic” place to die, while one jumper reportedly left a note on the bridge reading: “Why do you make it so easy?”

Experts dismiss the widespread belief that people stopped from killing themselves at the bridge kill themselves by other means. A study has shown that only 6 per cent of those who are prevented from jumping go on to commit suicide.

“While depression is the most common cause of suicide, many jumpers act impulsively as a consequence of acute stress, shame, humiliation, rejection or other trauma,” Dr Blaustein said.

The provision of a suicide net would stop the deaths, according to Dr Blaustein and Dr Fleming, and last year the bridge authorities did agree to erect a steel net — despite years of opposition from many in San Francisco. They object to tampering with the aesthetics of the bridge and to the cost, or feel that those who want to kill themselves should be allowed to get on with it.

However, 12 months and more than 20 deaths later, progress on the barrier has been slow. The authorities are due to present an updated report on the environmental effects soon but there are no firm proposals for funding the $50 million (£30 million) project.

Bridge authorities and campaigners estimate that it will be another four to five years, at best, before a barrier is in place, even if the funding is found within the next few months.

“The longer we delay the more deaths there are going to be. We would all like to see this finally get done,” Dr Blaustein said.

The psychiatrist said that barriers had significantly cut deaths at other suicide hotspots including the Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building. After a partial barrier was erected on the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol in 1998, the number of suicides halved and there was no increase seen in jumps from other high structures near by.

Those who believed that people who wanted to kill themselves should have the freedom to choose how they did it were misguided, Dr Blaustein said. That attitude failed to take into account grieving family and friends and also the traumatised witnesses. A study found that more than 70 per cent of jumpers from the Golden Gate Bridge were seen by commuters and tourists, often with children. Many were severely disturbed by seeing someone’s last desperate act.

Case study: The jumper

One survivor of the plunge into San Francisco Bay is now a high-school teacher, married for 30 years. He said of his suicide attempt: “I just looked out over the water to the city and it was beautiful. I felt that this was the right time and place to kill myself. The last thing I saw leave the bridge was my hands. It was at that time that I realised what a stupid thing I was doing. And there was nothing I could do but fall. The next thing I knew I was in the water hoping that someone would save me, saying: ‘Please God, save me, somebody save me.’

“It was incredible how quickly I had decided that I wanted to live once I realised everything that I was going to lose — my wife, my daughter, the rest of my family.”

The bridge

• The height of the bridge railing has long been a source of controversy. It was originally designed by Joseph Strauss to be five-and-a-half feet but was lowered at the last minute by the architect, Irving Morrow. Some say it was because he was a short man and wanted a good view

• Within weeks of it opening in 1937, a First World War veteran threw himself off the bridge

• By 1962 there was a suicide on average every other week. That rate has remained unchanged

• Bridge authorities have installed telephones with lines to counselling centres

Source: Times Archive

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