Tag: suicide barrier

Reading of the Week: Suicide Barriers & Suicide Prevention – the New CJP Study; Also, the Future of Education and AI & Diagnoses

From the Editor

The idea is simple: if certain locations attract suicidal individuals, making it harder for suicides to occur at those places can help. After much debate, in 2003, the City of Toronto did exactly that, constructing a suicide barrier for the Bloor Viaduct. Suicides immediately declined. 

What has been the long-term effect? And have the means of suicide deaths simply shifted? In the first selection, Dr. Mark Sinyor (of the University of Toronto) and his co-authors attempt to answer these questions. In a new study published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, they drew on over two decades of data to analyze the impact of this suicide barrier. “Contrary to initial findings, these results indicate an enduring suicide prevention effect of the Bloor Viaduct suicide barrier.” We consider the study and its implications.

Pretty but lifesaving?

When it comes to medical education, much has changed over the years – including its name. What was once known as Continuing Medical Education (CME) is now referred to as Continuing Professional Development (CPD). But the changes go far beyond a simple rebranding. After all, the sheer volume of journal articles available today is staggering. How can you keep up? How can technology help? In the second selection, a new Quick Takes podcast, I speak with Dr. Sanjeev Sockalingam (of the University of Toronto) to explore the evolving world of CPD. “It took a pandemic to get us to realize that we could do so much online.”

Finally, in the third selection, from JAMA Network Open, Dr. Ethan Goh (of Stanford University) and his colleagues wonder if AI can assist physicians in making diagnoses. In an RCT, physicians were randomized to either conventional resources or those enhanced by access to AI (specifically, LLM). “In this trial, the availability of an LLM to physicians as a diagnostic aid did not significantly improve clinical reasoning compared with conventional resources.”

DG

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Reading of the Week: Do Suicide Barriers Work? Sinyor et al. on the Bloor Viaduct and Toronto Suicides

From the Editor

Do suicide barriers really work, or do they cost money that could have been better spent elsewhere?

This debate raged in Toronto about a decade and a half ago when some argued that a suicide barrier must be added to the Bloor Viaduct. That bridge, which connects downtown Toronto with its east end, was considered a “suicide magnet” – a place that proved popular for suicide attempts. In North America, only the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco had more suicides associated with it. Media coverage of the debate included an article in The New York Times; it ran with the dramatic headline: “A Veil of Deterrence for a Bridge With a Dark Side.”

And in 2003, the barrier went up.

So did the suicide rate go down?

This week, we look at a new paper just published by Sunnybrook’s Mark Sinyor et al. Drawing on years of data, they consider the utility of the Bloor Viaduct suicide barrier. They find that it has saved lives. The paper obviously has implications for other bridges and cities.

The Bloor Viaduct: big debate, big outcome?

The authors also looked at media reporting on suicide.

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