The Final Leap (25 page)

Given this, it's understandable why suicide isn't talked about and why the usual compassion that people show others isn't evident. The prevailing sentiment seems to be: Why bother? Why invest time, energy, and resources in preventing people from doing something that seems unpreventable? In the United States today, with industry and technology all around us, with freeway overpasses, railroad crossings, and subway tracks everywhere on which to throw oneself, with an abundance of firearms that can be purchased on virtually any street corner, with over-the-counter drugs sold in bulk at thousands of places for quick and easy consumption, it's easier to take your life now than ever before. Why not just let people do it? It's legal, after all. Allow the rest of us time to turn our heads so that we don't have to look, and you can make a permanent exit.

The answer, quite simply, according to those who know, who have lost loved ones to suicide, is because if it was your son or daughter, sibling, parent, spouse, partner, or friend climbing over the railing, you'd want them to be saved. If you were there, and there was no physical reason for them to want to die, you'd be reaching for them frantically, trying to pull them back, working desperately to talk them out of it. If you knew that your loved one was headed to the bridge, or had a loaded gun, or had stockpiled medication, and planned to end his or her life, you'd do anything to stop the attempt. You'd stop it because you know something that your loved one doesn't—that suicide is a permanent response to what may be a temporary or manageable problem. Unfortunately, it takes time for someone to learn this. With suicide, time is the one commodity that's usually in short supply.

This brings us to the issue of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. There are three main arguments against a barrier. The first one is cost; a suicide barrier will be expensive. The second one is aesthetics; the Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful and a suicide barrier will mar it. The third reason has to do with effectiveness; if there's a barrier on the bridge, people will just kill themselves another way, so what does it matter?

In terms of cost, there's no question that a suicide barrier costs money. The actual amount is subject to debate—Bridge District officials estimate that each of the five options they considered, ranging from various forms of a taller railing to the option they chose, a net underneath, will cost $50 million. While it may be possible to construct a deterrent for less, the bottom line is that it won't be cheap. Then again, it also costs money to put airbags in cars, fences around swimming pools, child-proof caps on medications, and employ lifeguards at beaches, yet few people complain. These actions save lives.

As noted earlier, the original design for the Golden Gate Bridge included a railing that was five-and-a-half feet tall and angled in such a way as to make climbing over it difficult, but during construction the height was reduced to four feet. Lowering the railing at that point had little effect on the final cost of construction, and if the five-and-a-half-foot railing had been used as planned, the bridge still would have come in under budget.

Today, or course, it's a different story. Adding structural elements after the fact is a lot more expensive than incorporating them into the original design. Still, the district has a history of approving other types of additions to the bridge even when the cost is in the millions. For instance, in December 2003 a special barrier was erected on the Golden Gate Bridge to protect bicyclists from vehicle traffic. The barrier cost $5 million and was approved by the Bridge District despite the fact that no bicyclist had ever been killed on the bridge. What was the rationale? “Public safety” according to Denis Mulligan, chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge from 2001 to 2010 and currently CEO and general manager of the Bridge District.

The Bridge District also has approved a median on the bridge separating oncoming vehicle traffic. The cost estimates have ranged from $10 million to $20 million and held up construction, although Bridge District board members and staff are firmly committed to it for a simple reason: “Public safety,” Mulligan says again. Since 1937, when the Golden Gate Bridge opened, fewer than forty people have died in traffic accidents on the bridge. That number pales in comparison to the more than fifteen hundred people who have leaped to their deaths. Thus, it's reasonable to wonder why a suicide barrier on the bridge isn't considered a public safety issue given the number of people who have died, and why it doesn't have the highest priority.

That said, money is still an issue. In today's economy, with the nation struggling to come out of a recession and the State of California plagued by huge deficits, funding for projects like this is hard to come by. It becomes a question of priorities.

Many people believe that addressing the root cause of Golden Gate Bridge suicides—mental illness—makes more sense than erecting a barrier. Instead of spending millions of dollars on a suicide deterrent, they say, use the money to treat people before they become so desperate that they want to kill themselves. Dave Kahler used to be one of these people. In 2003, Kahler's thirty-two-year-old son jumped off the south end of the bridge, not venturing far enough out to land in water. Instead, he struck ground.

John Kahler had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder a decade earlier. He had a history of violence and needed to be institutionalized, but there were no long-term residential treatment options available to him. As a result, John lived at home with his widowed father, who tried to regulate his medications and behavior as best he could.

The day he died, John stood before Dave at 9:30 in the morning looking unusually well dressed, at least for him. There was a crease in his pants and he was wearing a green lumberjack shirt. Dave commented that he was “looking good” and asked John where he was going. John said he was visiting a friend in San Francisco. Dave challenged him on it because it was a Tuesday and he knew that the friend worked nine to five during the week. John mumbled something and hurried out the door.

Dave didn't give it much thought. John was an adult, with a car. Moreover, his attitude seemed more positive lately. “He was into a good space,” Dave says, “taking meds that seemed to be working.”

According to coroner's records, John's body was recovered at 11:20
A.M.
so he probably didn't stop anywhere on the way to the bridge. Dave got a call at 3
P.M.
from the San Francisco coroner's office asking if he knew a John Kahler. Dave replied that John was his son. The coroner asked Dave to describe the clothes that John was wearing, which he did. There was no need for Dave to physically identify the body; the clothing description matched. Because John landed on the ground, he still had his wallet, and his clothes weren't ruined by water.

The day before John's suicide, early in the afternoon, a woman was beaten to death along a popular walking trail. The trail was close to the Kahler's home and John Kahler was identified as a “person of interest” in the police investigation. Dave Kahler is adamant that this had nothing to do with this son's decision to jump. John died before the murder was public information; in fact, interest in John intensified only after police learned that he killed himself. Nevertheless, over the next few days Dave Kahler had little time to grieve. All of his energy was focused on clearing his son's name. Eventually, DNA tests exonerated John Kahler and implicated another man for the murder.

Ironically, John Kahler isn't considered a Golden Gate Bridge suicide. This surprised Dave Kahler when I told him. Since the autopsy was done by the San Francisco coroner, who doesn't attribute any fatalities specifically to the bridge, the cause of death is merely a fall from a great height. The fact that John's body was found below the bridge doesn't make any difference. Officially, it's the same as if it had been found in the courtyard of a hotel, the street below an apartment complex, or the foot of a high- rise office building.

Dave Kahler is convinced that his son's suicide was the result of a broken mental health system. Continuing cuts in funding have resulted in diminished services, overworked and overwhelmed staff, and only a small number of beds in treatment facilities for mentally ill people. The result is that family members have no choice but to become their children's own case workers. The answer, according to most mental health consumers and family members, is more money to pay for more resources. That's why Kahler originally was opposed to erecting a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. The cost wasn't worth it. He didn't oppose suicide deterrents, and in fact today supports a barrier. He just thought that $50 million could shore up some of the problems in the current mental health system, which ultimately would benefit more people.

The obvious point is that we should not have to make a choice, we should not have to choose between a bridge barrier and expanded mental health services. Practically speaking, however, there isn't enough money to do both, but that's only because the cost of fixing a broken mental health system far exceeds existing resources. The cost of a suicide deterrent on the Golden Gate Bridge, by comparison, is modest.

What's interesting is that there's evidence Californians—a majority of them anyway—really are interested in funding mental health services. The evidence comes in the form of Proposition 63, also known as the state's Mental Health Services Act. California voters passed it by more than a 2 to 1 margin in 2004, then reaffirmed it in a special election in 2009. The proposition added a 1 percent tax on individual incomes above $1 million with the money going to support local mental health programs. Admittedly, a major reason why it was approved was because most voters weren't personally affected. It did apply to 28,000 people in the state, though, with the resulting revenues—soon reaching $1 billion per year—representing the first new infusion of funding for mental health services in California in decades. A key provision in the act was that the money couldn't be used to supplant current mental health funding. Authors of the bill didn't want to repeat the mistake made years earlier when Californians approved a state lottery on the assumption that the revenues would provide new money for education, then saw state legislatures cut education funding and backfill it with lottery earnings. Prop 63 has opened the door for some new and innovative mental health programs; however, its passage also has coincided with major reductions in mental health services being made at the state level. The result is that new mental health programs are being funded and launched at the same that core mental health services are being defunded and dismantled. The hoped-for transformation of the system isn't occurring.

This as much as anything speaks to both the challenge and the benefit of funding a suicide deterrent on the Golden Gate Bridge. The challenge is reaching agreement on why money should be allocated when there are multiple, pressing needs. The benefit is that once a barrier is erected, the impact will be immediate and measurable, and no one will be able to take it away. Unlike proceeds from the state lottery or the Mental Health Services Act, which were implemented with grand intentions, there won't be negative consequences down the road. The barrier will be there as long as the bridge is standing, and suicides from the bridge will end.

In 2009, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed for and got a rare, mid-year election. On the ballot were six propositions the governor said would help balance the state's budget. One proposition authorized the state to raid proceeds from the Mental Health Services Act for four years. California voters rejected it, as well as four of the five other proposals that Schwarzenegger championed. Even so, the election made clear that California leaders consider special pots of funding, designated by voters for specific purposes, to be at their disposal. Indeed, one of Jerry Brown's first acts after he succeeded Schwarzenegger as governor was to raid Mental Health Services Act funding.

A bridge barrier isn't like that. Once it's up, it's up. It's not subject to debate or money grabs.

It's hard to argue with the need to expand mental health programs and services. Yet there are no easy answers as to how this should be done or how it can be sustained. In contrast, the solution to the problem of suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge is clear and requires only a one-time expense. In the short term, it may not benefit as many people as using the money to patch holes in the current mental health system, but over time its impact could be greater, especially if one considers that at least six people— family members and close friends—mourn each suicide, and many others are affected.

Moreover, money for a suicide barrier on the bridge doesn't have to come out of mental health funding. In all likelihood, it probably won't. The Golden Gate Bridge is a key link in California's transportation system, and it's reasonable to think that transportation funds can be used to pay for a suicide deterrent the same way that they pay for other bridge improvements.

It's worth noting that in earlier days, when the economy was robust, there was considerable funding for public works projects and the Bridge District was operating with a surplus. The opportunity existed to deal with the problem for a fraction of the current cost—$200,000 if funded in 1953; $3 million if funded in 1993. Even as late as 2005, the Bridge District estimated that a barrier could be erected for $15 million. Doing nothing seems to drive up the cost almost exponentially, to say nothing of the emotional cost incurred by families of the deceased.

Bridge District CEO Denis Mulligan disagrees with the notion that delays result in high costs. He says that recent studies pertaining to a net indicate that the district has a clear picture of the costs, and the current budget numbers are real. Previous numbers weren't as flushed out, he says, or were provided by people who had a vested interest in selling a particular product. Furthermore, he believes that the current cost—$50 million, including $5 million already received from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for final plans—is legitimate and will increase only nominally the longer it takes for the remaining funding to be raised. Time will tell if he is right.