Effect of restricting access to a suicide jumping site.

OBJECTIVE

The road to a headland that had become a suicide jumping hotspot was temporarily closed because of construction work. This created an opportunity to assess whether loss of vehicular access would lead to a reduction in suicides and emergency police callouts for threatened suicide at the site.

METHOD: Deaths at the headland were ascertained for a 10 year period before road closure and for 2 years following closure using records from the local police inquest officer, the coroner's pathologist and Marine Search and Rescue. Police provided a list of police callouts for threatened suicide at the site for a 4 year period before closure and for 2 years following closure. Simple rates were compared and incident rate ratios were calculated where possible.

RESULTS

There were 13 deaths at the headland involving suicide or open verdicts in the 10 years before access was restricted, and none in the 2 years following road closure. This difference was statistically significant (incident rate difference = 1.3 deaths per year, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.6-2.0). No jumping suicides occurred elsewhere in the police district following the road closure. Police callouts for threatened suicide also fell significantly, from 19.3 per year in the 4 years prior to road closure to 9.5 per year for the following 2 years (incident rate ratio = 2.0, 95% CI = 1.2-3.5).

CONCLUSIONS

Preventing vehicular access to a suicide jumping hotspot was an effective means of suicide prevention at the site. There was no evidence of substitution to other jumping sites.