Suicide prevention subway platform doors recommended for TTC by Toronto Board of Health

The report, approvied at the Nov. 17 meeting of the Toronto Board of Health, offers up that among 12 recommendations that would get at the underlying causes and immediate risks of death by suicides for Torontonians.

The study looked at suicides in Toronto in 2009, which at 243 were more than four times the number of those who died from homicide and three times the number of those who died in motor vehicle incidents.

The numbers of suicides and attempted suicides on the TTC is smaller than that, but alarmingly consistent year to year. So far this year, eight people have died and 13 people attempted suicide. Since 1998, 197 people have taken their lives jumping from subway platforms.

According to the report, in other cities platform edge doors — which render the subway tracks inaccessible from the platform — have proven

effective in preventing suicides.

On Nov. 17, the board of health heard from experts who said the barriers — along with other measures, such as more suicide barriers along high bridges and training for teachers and city workers in suicide prevention — could make a difference.

You might be interested in

{{type}}

{{title}}

• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

{{type}}

{{title}}

• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

Isaac Sakinofsky, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said he hwas worked with suicide survivors and had also worked to promote and fundraise for the Luminous Veil, a suicide barrier on the Bloor Viaduct.

"It’s stopped suicides," he said. "It’s stopped bodies hurling down on the school. On the Don Valley Parkway."

Sarkinofsky said that he believed setting up barriers on subway platforms would help a lot of potentially suicidal people step away from the irreversible decision to take their own life.

"A suicidal person has a scenario in their head, and if it’s not available to them, they don’t go somewhere else right away," said Sakinofsky, who confessed that dealing with suicidal people "is the most poignant part of psychiatry. No one who attempts suicide isn’t desperate."

His position was echoed by Lindsay Hill, who told the board that she had contemplated suicide on several occasions in her life and always been saved by intervention or circumstance.

"Unless you have been in that situation, you cannot understand that it is a moment that comes upon you as the opportunity’s presented," she said. "If you are prevented from accessing that opportunity, your life will be saved at that moment. I have been suicidal a number of times in my life and each time I have recovered, I have gone on, I have felt love and hope and joy and fulfillment."

The board’s support of the report and strategy is another step toward building on-platform barriers across the system. TTC estimate that it will cost $10 million per station to add platform-edge doors.

And before that happens, the TTC must complete the installation of an automated signal system that will allow trains to stop with enough precision to line up with the platform-edge doors.