I watched a movie the other night called The Bridge. Kind of a morbid thing to do on a Saturday night, because it's a documentary about suicide, but it was pretty interesting. The director Eric Steel got the footage for the most crucial pieces of the film (i.e., people jumping) by setting up his camera to shoot the Golden Gate Bridge continuously during the year 2004. (Apparently, the bridge is the most popular place for committing suicide; dozens jump to their death from it every year.) To the right here is a still shot a photographer (unrelated to the film) got of one of the would-be jumpers. You'll be relieved to hear that she was actually prevented from jumping (albeit very much against her will). . . by that very photographer.

Cruel irony (not mentioned in the movie) - some of the antidepressant medications on the market these days improve feelings of motivation before mood. So, the risk of depressed people trying to commit suicide may increase during the first 8 weeks of drug treatment because they still feel miserable . . . but finally have enough energy and focus to do something about it (i.e., take their lives).

In my opinion, the best part of the documentary was when that photographer who saved the young woman discussed his transformation from uninvolved observer to active Samaritan. It begs the question - when does one get involved, what responsibilities do strangers have toward other strangers, and what do the answers to those questions say about us as individuals and as a society?

Apparently, Steel received a lot of flack for parts of the film because, while, as I mentioned, most of the crucial footage was shot passively/unmanned, there are a few segments where someone is clearly manipulating the camera, getting better angles and close-ups. Critics and humanitarians have faulted Steel for exploiting these people at their lowest, most desperate moments and not doing more to try to get them help. And that has been countered with the argument that it's not practical to call the police every time you think you see someone acting "odd" on the bridge and that by the time you might be able to get someone over there, the person will have likely already jumped anyway. I don't know. It's all an interesting commentary on dispersion of responsibility, if you ask me (the social psychological term for this is bystander effect). In the documentary footage, we see so many people walking, running, cycling by as these lost souls, all alone, wanly look over the railing at the water far below them. Because there are so many people, no one person feels it's his or her unique obligation to act (although one or two do actually ask if the person is "ok," the exception not the norm). That disconnect is particularly tragic in cases like this - especially when the only other potential life line for these folks might be the one pictured here to the right.

The funny thing about the bystander effect is that when you tell people about the phenomenon, most will argue that they'd be the one to help, they'd be that exception to the rule. I'm not saying every one of them would be wrong, . . . but most would be. There have been tons of studies conducted that replicate these findings. I'm not saying we're all hopeless lemmings. Knowledge, as always, can have a counterbalancing effect; knowing there is this phenomenon to which we can all be susceptible might raise our awareness of situations like this and our potential roles in them. In fact, after learning about the bystander effect, my friend Ezra posted an interesting piece about encountering a situation (although, thankfully, not a life-threatening situation) where he questioned his responsibility as a passerby. He gives himself a hard time, saying he "had (sort of) failed one moral test," but I say at least his conscience was in the right place, his awareness was heightened.

Another friend of mine, Marc Etkind, published a collection of suicide notes (not to worry - not his own) a little over ten years ago called . . . Or Not to Be (the title, of course, based on that oft-quoted phrase of Shakespeare's Hamlet). In it, he reveals that less than one in five people who successfully commits suicide actually leaves a note and that these sort of notes became more common with the rise in popularity and circulation of newspapers in the 18th century (there were some cases of people actually publishing their suicide notes in the paper).

The news media has also had another interesting influence with regards to suicide statistics. If you were surprised to hear about the social psychology behind group inaction, you might also be surprised to hear what one researcher found - "Immediately after stories about suicides appeared [in the newspaper], suicides in the area served by the newspaper jumped. In the case of national stories, the rate jumped nationally" (David Phillips, Univ. or California, San Diego, as reported in Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point - not a proper citation, but now you know where to look for more info).

I will end my little post here with the same quote, by Edwin Shneidman, with which Marc begins his book - "I have never read a suicide note that I would want to have written." Amen to that.