I’d think the only way they could have been forcefully removed would be if they were hesitating to jump or not really planning or committed to jump in the first place. If they were committed to jumping they wouldn’t have been able to forcefully stop them since they would have leaped before anyone could get to them. Given that, I don’t think the stats are that valid.</p>
<p>
How would the lawsuit stop anyone from taking their life? That doesn’t make sense. I suppose if they placed 24 hour guards around the bridge they might be able to stop people from jumping at that particular point but they could take their lives in a thousand other ways if they wanted to including jumping from other bridges and overpasses.</p>
<p>The parents shouldn’t blame the school for this - it was something their son did - apparently on his own for whatever internal reasons he had in doing it.</p>
<p>I am not taking a position on the merits of the lawsuit.</p>
<p>In this discussion, however, there have been claims that people will kill themselves in another way if certain means are taken away from them. I am simply pointing out that this typically is not the case. </p>
<p>In fact, there is broad agreement among suicide researchers that removal of the means of suicide often saves lives.</p>
<p>I was going to post the same thing ADad did–it’s not at all obvious that a person who considers jumping off a bridge (a possibly impulsive act) will methodically find some other means of suicide. I question whether there’s any liability on the part of the college, but it’s very possible that the suit will be settled with an agreement to improve barriers and little or no cash payment to the plaintiffs.</p>
<p>This may not be a popular question. But I will ask anyway: Do you think the father is entirely blameless? Should he be looking into the mirror and see if he had made any mistakes in the process of raising his son that could have caused the tragedy?</p>
<p>It has been a great challenge to identify clinically depressed young people before they attempt to harm themselves. Often there can be an intervention and treatment. Too often a suicide attempt is the first time anyone realizes there may be a mental health issue.</p>
<p>Bridges to do not kill people.</p>
<p>Perhaps rather than suing the school, the grieving parents could focus their energy on advocating for more comprehensive mental healthcare and a means to finance it.</p>
<p>I think the college should sue the parents for sending their kid to their school. This has tarnished the reputation of Cornell as a suicide school. I believe the kid’s family is more responsible for this kids death than anyone else. Who else is going to know as much about you kid as you do? The bridge is not the problem. The problem is that the parents were not in touch enough with their own kid to know something was wrong. I maybe way off base but most people don’t feel helpless when they have a good family support network and unconditional love.</p>
Anyone who has had a suicide in the family will ask himself this question a million times. Sometimes, you just don’t see an answer.</p>
<p>To me, there are some valuable questions raised by this lawsuit:
Do people impulsively throw themselves off bridges who might otherwise not have committed suicide?
If yes, are there physical barriers that can make this less likely to occur?
If yes, who, if anyone, has an obligation to install such barriers? And a corollary: to what extent should other factors (such as interfering with the pretty view) be taken into account in deciding whether to install the barriers?</p>
<p>I think these are valid questions, and it may be that a lawsuit was needed in order to get them taken seriously enough.</p>
<p>Congratulations. This might be the stupidest thing I have ever read on this forum! I personally know a number of families of suicide victims and other young people with mental health issues who are VERY in touch with their kids’ issues. In fact, these families did everything possible to support their children and get all available help. </p>
<p>kxc- Your post is a close second. Do you have any idea how good people can be at hiding emotional pain and insisting that they are fine until…they aren’t? </p>
<p>That said, I was a lawyer for a company that made a product found on most houses that could seriously hurt or kill you if used/maintained/installed improperly. We learned that many times people will sue just as a way of dealing with their own grief, even if it truly wasn’t the fault of the product/bridge/whatever. This was especially the case if their own error or negligence or failure to repair was a cause of the accident. It was just too painful to believe that they had a role, so they needed to lay it on the manufacturer. I came to understand this.</p>
<p>The college should sue the parents? Very nice.</p>
<p>At least your name is not greatmomof3girls; so I hold out hope for some self-awareness. Decency - no, compassion - no, self-awareness - possible (but improbable).</p>
<p>Harvard is already monitoring its students’ BMIs for signs of eating disorders, among other things, for fear of harboring suicidal students. People who fail to impress at a health check are volunteered for medical leave–sometimes indefinitely.</p>
<p>“This has tarnished the reputation of Cornell as a suicide school.”</p>
<p>It strikes me that if may have enhanced Cornell’s reputation in this grim regard. Possibly you wish to suggest an alternate definition of “tarnish”, Mother of Greatness.</p>
<p>I have the perspective of living near a bridge which had a great deal of suicides. Pedestrian access, no barrier until recently.
A few years ago, a young teen on Ds soccer team jumped after a fight with her mother.
Who wasn’t impulsive when they were 15? Has NOTHING to do with the relationship with her parents, but easy access to the bridge required a lot less thought than other means.
If making access more difficult is a deterrent, why not do it?
Not having a fence makes it an " attractive nuisance".</p>
<p>I don’t think I am that wrong. I have seen kids talking to their parents and the parents really think they are doing such a great job and all so committed. The kids are giving all kinds of signs that the parent is not caring or listening but the parent believes they have delt with the situation just fine. Parents don’t always do enough even if they think they did everything possible. I know you can not stop everyone from committing suicide no matter how much help you give. Because I believe families are the most responsible for knowing about their own family members does not make me stupid. There is no one outside the family that should be responsible for anything your kid does. I just think it is wrong to blame a bridge for a death. His mental illness coupled with some turning point sent him down this path. You can not always cure mental illness.</p>
<p>So, every potential means of offing one’s self should be idiot proofed?? That list will be very long and very expensive. Jumping off bridges just gets more attention because of the romance of it.
"Jumping from height is the act of jumping from high altitudes, for example, from a window (self-defenestration or auto-defenestration), balcony or roof of a high rise building, cliff, dam or bridge.</p>
<p>“In the United States, jumping is among the least common methods of committing suicide (less than 2% of all reported suicides in the United States for 2005).”</p>
<p>This is not about curing mental illness. This is about whether it’s a good idea to make it difficult for college students to jump off bridges. In my mind, there are significant questions of fact that should be answered.</p>