Preventing Suicide: Resources

Aug. 13, 2010— -- Annie and Alex Morell, the daughters of newspaper heiress Anne Scripps, grew up happy, privileged and loved in the New York suburbs.

Then on New Year's Eve, 1993, Scripps was attacked and killed in her home with a hammer. After the killing, her husband, the girls' stepfather, drove to the Tappan Zee Bridge and jumped to his death.

Sixteen years later, Annie Morell Petrillo, grown up and a divorced mother herself, was still suffering from the loss of her mother. To the shock of her friends and family, she jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge from the very same place her stepfather did years earlier.

Click HERE for the Scripps family story.

Suicide, said Kevin Caruso, executive director of www.suicide.org, is completely preventable. His website is designed to help suicidal people find the help they need, offering supportive information and resources. Countless people have credited the site with saving their lives, Caruso said.

There are many ways to prevent suicide, from mental health resources to physical barriers.

One 1978 academic study looked at 515 people who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971. It found that more than 90 percent were still alive or had died of natural causes at the time of the study. It concluded that suicidal behavior is "crisis-oriented and acute" in nature. Prevention and intervention, such as building barriers to stop jumpers, are helpful.

"If we prevent people from jumping off bridges (and get them the professional help that they need), the suicidal feelings they are experiencing will subside and the likelihood of them dying by suicide will be greatly diminished," Caruso said.

Signs, telephones that connect to a suicide prevention hotline, law-enforcement patrols and volunteer patrols can help prevent suicides on bridges, he added.