Dear Friends of Crisis Support:

The building of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge has been on our minds these days. The question that concerns many people is, Should we build a suicide barrier or not? Last month, after much controversy, the Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors voted to move forward on the study to build a barrier.
   After more than 1,200 confirmed jumping deaths off the Golden Gate Bridge during the past 69 years, there were 29 suicides last year alone, how can building a barrier still be a controversial issue?
   Richard Seiden, Ph.D., Professor of Public Health and past Board Member of Crisis Support Services, has compiled a comprehensive long-term study of suicidal behavior and the Golden Gate Bridge. Professor Seiden followed the lives of 515 people who had been removed from the bridge after making an overt suicidal gesture. Decades later, 95% of those people were still alive or had died of natural causes.
   Of the 26 people who have survived the jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, only 1 later committed suicide.
   What do these numbers tell us? They tell us that almost every suicide and suicide attempt is the result of an impulsive decision made by a person who is experiencing tremendous pain and despair. And if we take measures to prevent people from acting on their desperate impulses; if we build a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge we can save lives.
   For 40 years, Crisis Support Services has provided counseling support, 24/7, through our suicide prevention and crisis intervention hotline. We also sponsor a support group for people who have attempted suicide, and our grief counseling program offers face-to-face counseling support for those who are grieving the loss of a loved one to suicide.
   Thank you for all of your support in our life-saving mission!

Nancy A. Salamy, MFT
Executive Director

A New Leader for CSS Board

Retired attorney Nancy Ranney has the “Greatest Admiration” for those who work for the cause

By Juanita Carroll Young

I recently had the opportunity to sit with our new board president, Nancy Ranney. Nancy has already demonstrated her legal acumen by speaking on behalf of CSS to Federal Judge Saundra B. Armstrong, in a successful bid to win a $50,000 renewal grant in a court settlement. The funds will be used to support suicide prevention outreach programs for youth and seniors.

What brought you to CSS?

I was asked to join the board by my old friend (and former CSS Board President), Barbara W., who wanted to have an attorney present to help identify legal issues for the organization. I was still practicing law at the time.

When you began volunteering, did you have any concerns about participating on the CSS Board?

Yes, I didn’t know much about suicide.

How have things changed?

I’ve learned a great deal, through the terrific program staff at CSS and their presentations to the CSS Board. They were heartening and illuminating.

What do you do as board president?

I see my role as keeping an eye on the big picture, and acting as a liaison between the CSS Board and staff. My goals for the year: (1) recruit more CSS Board members, and (2) help board members learn more about the agency’s work by visiting our programs wherever possible.

What relevance does your participation have on your life outside CSS?

I’ve become more sensitive to unmet needs for treatment of depression in vulnerable populations.

What motivates you?

The CSS Staff and Volunteers—I’m filled with admiration for each and every one of them.

Would you encourage others to volunteer for CSS?

Absolutely!

What do you think the public should know about suicide?

The public should know that depression is more widespread than most people realize, and that in vulnerable populations like teens and the elderly, depression can lead to suicide attempts or completions. The stigma of suicide creates a barrier to support for treatment.

What do you do for fun?

I’m retired now, so I have the time to read, audit classes like Classical Greek History at U.C. Berkeley, and attend symphony concerts and the ballet. I learned to appreciate German lieder, especially those of Schubert and Mahler, from my husband (Austin Ranney).

Straight Talk about Suicide: Second in a Series

By Christina Curtis, MFT

   Suicide and depression have been with us since the beginning of recorded history. Greek tragedies, the Bible, and ancient mythologies of various cultures signal its eternal presence. Despite the prevalence of these twin epidemics, we struggle to come to terms with depression and suicide as a culture. One in four Americans will suffer a clinical depression at some point in his or her life. Upwards of 31,000 people a year commit suicide in the U.S. alone.  Yet in the trainings I conduct out in the community I encounter resistance to the topic.

   The majority of my in-service trainings are presented to mental health providers: clinicians, interns pursuing their MFT and MSW and doctoral degrees, paraprofessionals and skilled volunteers. I expected that experience in the mental health fields would inoculate my audience from the powerful silence which surrounds the subject of suicide. I thought, in other words, I’d be “preaching to the choir.” Not so. In discussing the moral and emotional aspects of suicide at in-service trainings many participants express shame, fear, and confusion. Sometimes I see the “uh-oh!” look on some faces as soon as I walk in.

   Working with other mental health professionals reminds me to keep reexamining my own attitudes about suicide. The layers of feelings about suicide can always run deeper and deeper. My own history, my family history, past experiences with suicidal clients, ideas I have about the causes of depression and mental illness, my fear as a parent when confronted with high rates of depression and suicide in youth— are all threads interwoven into my presentation on suicide. When it comes to depression and suicide we are all affected by cultural attitudes. My core mission is to let this stigma see the light of day and to combat silence with information. Hopefully, my training begins a conversation that doesn’t end when I leave the room. But that conversation, whether it’s an internal or interactive one, keeps flowing. Like all stigmatized topics, I notice it becomes less frightening, less uncomfortable and even less “depressing” to speak about once we begin doing so.

    I recently received a request from a local high school counselor to come speak with a group of parents. As the date of the presentation approached she became more and more nervous, trying to micromanage my subject matter. She finally wrote me an email asking me to focus on communication techniques with teens and that I address depression only briefly and suicide not at all. She used the phrase “nothing too scary.” She had only the best intentions and as a parent myself, I can keenly sympathize with her hunch that parents might find information about high rates of suicide and depression among teens difficult to hear. Though she might not have been conscious of it, the counselor’s concerns arose from the shame which surrounds suicide in our culture. I gently addressed the taboo nature of the topic and got her to acknowledge that parents need to hear what I have to say.

   As a suicide prevention educator, if I were to present to those parents without acknowledging depression and suicide I would be colluding in the silence. What helps break down stigma? Talking about it. That is the most important function of my job here at CSS-really, it is a central passion for me—to keep talking about suicide in the most plainspoken way I can.

   Christina Curtis, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, is the part time Community Education Coordinator at CSS. Her background in mental health includes work as a bereavement and crisis counselor at Visiting Nurses and Hospice of San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 90’s, as a school-based family counselor with families in crisis, and as a counselor on an adolescent psychiatric unit at Belmont Hills Hospital.   

Donor List Spring 2006

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