It’s hard to enjoy the bridge without thinking about suicide

I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area all my life, but until 1996, when I became the executive director of a nationally certified crisis intervention and suicide prevention center, I didn’t know how many people had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I knew that people jumped from time to time, but I had no idea that there were so many of them – more than 1000 by then, and twice that now.¹— or that the bridge was the most popular suicide spot in the world. Ken Holmes didn’t know either.

Holmes was the coroner for Marin County, which is connected to San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge. Before 1990, he rarely had bridge jumping incidents because all bodies recovered by the Coast Guard were taken to the coroner’s office in San Francisco. However, in 1990, Coast Guard Station Golden Gate moved from San Francisco to Marin County, and the bodies of the bridge jumpers were brought to Holmes’ office. It was then that he began to realize the scale of the problem.

In San Francisco, the coroner’s office combined jumping from office buildings, hotels, freeway overpasses, cliffs and bridges into one category, making it difficult for anyone to access information specifically about suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge. Holmes was determined to change this. He set aside separate drawers in his office to store cases of the Golden Gate Bridge jumpers and issued periodic reports that preserved victims’ anonymity but aggregated information by age, gender, occupation and hometown.

This went on for 20 years, until 2010. The Marin County Coroner’s Office was then merged with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, Holmes retired, and the Golden Gate Bridge jumper cases were no longer segmented.

My epiphany moment regarding the Golden Gate Bridge occurred during my first week working at the crisis center. Members of the local artists’ guild came to our office once a month and replaced all the paintings on the walls with new ones. I thought it was a charming practice until the staff went around the place after the guild members left and removed all the artwork that included a depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Because many of the family members in our grief counseling program have lost loved ones to the bridge,” I was told, “and it hurts them to see this image.”

From that moment on, and in the years that followed, I could no longer look at the Golden Gate Bridge the same way. It became even more difficult when out-of-town guests arrived and said they wanted to walk across the bridge. I used to walk around it, but now I find myself studying every person I see, especially those who were alone, looking for any hint of suicide.

The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937. The first suicide from the bridge occurred three months later.² and for over 85 years, suicides from the bridge continued uninterrupted. Only in recent months has stainless steel marine mesh been installed under the bridge to prevent suicides.³ In July, I attended a special ceremony to mark the completion of the network and sailed under the bridge on a private ferry to view the network from below, but I have not walked along the span since. Hopefully next time I can enjoy the amazing view and not think about all the people who came to this world famous landmark for a completely different reason.

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For 24/7 assistance, dial 988 988 Suicide and Crisis Helplineor contact Crisis text line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a GP near you, visit Handbook of Therapy “Psychology Today”.