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There is an excellent documentary called "The Bridge" about people committing suicide by jumping off of the golden gate bridge in SF. Given the height of the br

There is an excellent documentary called "The Bridge" about people committing suicide by jumping off of the golden gate bridge in SF. Given the height of the bridge, it takes 4 seconds before you hit the water, and some people survive it. They had interviews with people that survived it -- and they basically all said that as soon as they let go, they realized it was a mistake. That all of their problems were solvable, except for the one they just made. I do recall one man who did not survive, who seemed at peace during the video of his fall -- he was one who I think perhaps did not regret the act, but was the extreme outlier in that regard. If you are 85 and dying of painful cancer, I can also see it being an act that makes sense, made to decide one's own fate. But MOST people seem to grow out of their suicidal phases, and realize it was the wrong choice, driven by bad thought patterns. In the same way that people try to help addicts or people with eating disorders try to obtain better thought patterns, suicidal ideation seems to me to be largely a broken thought pattern we should help people overcome, not an individual decision one should respect.

ThrowawayP 8y ago
> They had interviews with people that survived it -- and they basically all said that as soon as they let go, they realized it was a mistake. That all of their problems were solvable, except for the one they just made. That fails to explain those who attempt suicide more than once. EDIT: I found an informal estimate from this article (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-treatment-for-attempted-suicide/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-tre...) by psychiatrist Scott Alexander: "It is somewhat harder to find good studies on what percent attempt suicide again. By eyeballing some other statistics and trying to fit them together, I believe it is greater than 25% but less than 50%. One textbook whose studies I have not been able to verify says that 30% of untreated and 15% of treated suicide attempters try again."
- okmokmz 8y ago
  The same reason that drug addicts who have been sober for long periods of time regularly relapse. Many people have more than one moment of weakness or crisis in their lives
sykh 8y ago
My wife is a psychiatrist and has dealt with people who survived suicide attempts. Mostly people who tried to kill themselves by shooting themself in the head. She says that her experience is that people do not immediately regret the decision just the consequence of having survived severe damage to the head. It seems, at first thought, unreasonable that people trying to kill themselves by jumping off a bridge would be more likely to regret the decision than people who shoot themselves in the head. I wonder if this is mostly a selective choosing of the survivors of jumping off the bridge to fit a narrative.
magduf 8y ago
So it sounds like what we need is a way for people to think they're really committing suicide, but in reality they're not, so they can go through the experience and realize they don't really want to do it after all. This reminds me a bit of that movie "Strange Days" (where people relived others' experiences), or of course "The Matrix".

ThrowawayP 8y ago

> They had interviews with people that survived it -- and they basically all said that as soon as they let go, they realized it was a mistake. That all of their problems were solvable, except for the one they just made. That fails to explain those who attempt suicide more than once. EDIT: I found an informal estimate from this article (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-treatment-for-attempted-suicide/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-tre...) by psychiatrist Scott Alexander: "It is somewhat harder to find good studies on what percent attempt suicide again. By eyeballing some other statistics and trying to fit them together, I believe it is greater than 25% but less than 50%. One textbook whose studies I have not been able to verify says that 30% of untreated and 15% of treated suicide attempters try again."

okmokmz 8y ago
The same reason that drug addicts who have been sober for long periods of time regularly relapse. Many people have more than one moment of weakness or crisis in their lives

sykh 8y ago

My wife is a psychiatrist and has dealt with people who survived suicide attempts. Mostly people who tried to kill themselves by shooting themself in the head. She says that her experience is that people do not immediately regret the decision just the consequence of having survived severe damage to the head. It seems, at first thought, unreasonable that people trying to kill themselves by jumping off a bridge would be more likely to regret the decision than people who shoot themselves in the head. I wonder if this is mostly a selective choosing of the survivors of jumping off the bridge to fit a narrative.

magduf 8y ago

So it sounds like what we need is a way for people to think they're really committing suicide, but in reality they're not, so they can go through the experience and realize they don't really want to do it after all. This reminds me a bit of that movie "Strange Days" (where people relived others' experiences), or of course "The Matrix".