Download - New York State Office of Mental Health

Saving Lives in New York Volume 2: Approaches and Special Populations
sultant called the move “a rational step.”
“What you have is a systems approach that
makes it less easy for someone to take
impulsive action. It is no different from putting
up fences to prevent suicide on the
Golden Gate Bridge.” (Arenson: March 30,
2005) The move to restricted access is not
without controversy: the student newspaper
at NYU described the installation of
barriers as “a face-saving way for NYU to
ensure that students don’t end their lives
on NYU’s campus, rather than a way to
reach out to suicidal students and offer
them help and guidance.” (Arenson: March
30, 2005) Meanwhile, the University has
also expanded counseling services, promoted
mental health literacy, and
increased access to information on depression
and related disorders for its students.
Another example of technology successfully
reducing suicide deaths is the conversion
in England in 1963 from deadly coke gas to
a less lethal natural gas for home use.
There was little substitution to more available
means such as hanging or drowning
and within a few years, the overall suicide
rate was reduced by one-third. (Seiden:
1978) To make a major impact on our own
suicide rate, safety technologies that make
discharge of firearms less likely should be
made more widely available. A law signed
by Governor Pataki in 2000 has helped to
achieve this goal. It requires firearms retailers
to include a child safety locking device
with all purchases; post notices regarding
safe storage of guns in their place of business;
and include gun safety information
with the purchase of any gun. Failure to
comply with this law is punishable as a
class A misdemeanor.
This law also places a ban on assault
weapons; raises the minimum age to
obtain a permit to purchase a handgun to
21 years old; implements a DNA for Handguns
program; establishes a gun trafficking
interdiction; and directs a study to be conducted
on “smart gun” technology. In signing
this law, Governor Pataki said: “While
New York State leads the nation with a 39
percent drop in violent crime since 1994,
we still have too much gun violence in our
communities. Each year more New Yorkers
are killed by guns than die in car crashes –
and that must change. This new law will
help.” (Pataki: 2000) Recent statistics on the
use of firearms in suicides show this
change is occurring.
A recent study, published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association on February
9, 2005 found that locked guns appear
to offer the most protection against accidental
death and injury or during a suicide
attempt. Any one of the four storage methods,
including keeping guns and ammunition
in different locations, cuts the risk of
death and injury by between 55 and 73 percent.
(Grossman et al: February 9, 2005)
The study found that when guns are stored
unloaded, locked and separate from ammunition,
this practice offers the most protection
against accidental or suicidal use.
“Doctors who treated suicidal teens should
use the study to reinforce the effectiveness
of keeping guns securely locked and inaccessible,”
said Jerry Reed, executive director
of the Suicide Prevention Action Network.
“It just seems appropriate we would look at
this just like we would storing poison under
the sink.” Finally, we should recognize the
limits of means restriction. In New Jersey,
there has been a rash of ‘suicides by locomotive’,
where people deliberately place
themselves in front of moving commuter
trains traveling at high speeds. Because rail
lines are so extensive, fences are not a real
deterrent to someone who is determined to
gain access to the railroad tracks. Death on
the tracks – at a rate of about 25 a year –
has become a regular occurrence. The New
Jersey Transit Authority has responded by
providing a regular counseling program for
train crews who respond to these grisly suicidal
incidents. (Smothers: 2003)
As noted, a possible outcome of restricting
one specific means of self-harm is the substitution
of another means in its place. This has
apparently been the case for American adolescents,
ages 10-14, between 1992-2001
(CDC: 2004). Over this period, rates of suicide
using firearms and poisoning decreased,
whereas suicides by suffocation increased.
By 2001, suffocation (asphyxia/hanging) had
surpassed firearms to become the most common
method of suicide death for this age
32 Means Restriction