Rudman's city: Unmentionable attraction of bridge that's too close

By BRIAN RUDMAN

In today's let-it-all-hang-out society, there is still one great unmentionable - suicide. Our screens and magazine racks pour out a 24-hour diet of sex, drugs, bloody murder and rock 'n' roll, and experts aplenty leap to argue its lack of harm.

But even ask a question about suicide and we in the media are taken aside and warned off. There's a link, we're warned, between writing about the subject and subsequent increases in the act.

And it's not just the media that gets the message. A few months ago, when Auckland City's planning committee received a report recommending a $850,000 laminated glass anti-suicide barrier be erected on both sides of the historic Grafton Bridge, the document was suppressed for fear of what the repercussions might be.

But this week, the barrier is out in the open before independent planning commissioner Alan Dormer, who is hearing the council's application to build it. Backing the application is the mental health industry, with opposition - mainly on aesthetic grounds - led by several local residents.

On the face of it, the pro-barrier case is convincing. In the three years before the removal of the old barrier in 1996, there were three deaths by suicide off the bridge. Between 1997 and last year there were 16.

Dr Annette Beautrais, a Christchurch School of Medicine expert, told Mr Dormer: "To place this excess mortality in context, the number of excess deaths from Grafton Bridge following the removal of barriers is close to the mortality associated with the Cave Creek disaster and is almost certainly higher than rates of mortality from recent high-profile inquiries into the obstetric and gynaecological health of women."

A good debating point, but rather ruined by the questionable politics that immediately followed.

"It is notable, however," she added, "that the excess mortality following the removal of safety barriers from Grafton Bridge has attracted far less concern, far less attention and far less sympathy than have these parallel events involving mortality and young people and mortality and women.

"This may reflect societal attitudes to males with severe mental illness - they, are, I believe, one of the most disenfranchised groups in this city."

If Dr Beautrais had paused for a moment she might have realised that the lack of concern about increased problems with Grafton Bridge could more properly be laid at the feet of her profession, which continues to fight to keep the public ignorant about what is going on.

Objectors to the barrier, which will almost double the height of the 1.5m balustrades, complain it will spoil the aesthetics of the bridge and trap traffic fumes. They also query some aspects of the health professionals' case.

The doctors take the emotional high road, asking what price aesthetics when human lives are at stake. In truth, the issue turn out to be a bit more complicated than that. As I read the figures, no more Aucklanders have succumbed to this form of suicide as a result of the old barrier being removed. What has happened is that other venues have become less popular.

And this raises the one question that none of the doctors and medical professionals has broached - the wisdom of siting the city's mental health crisis centre - the Conolly unit at Auckland Hospital - right next to the bridge.

The connection between the two is compelling and comes from Dr Beautrais' own figures. Fifteen of the 17 victims after the 1996 wall removal were in inpatient care at the acute Conolly unit or in psychiatric residential or outpaitent care at the time of their deaths.

Dr Beautrais and her colleagues name the bridge as the problem. So do Dr Colin Tukitonga, the Director of Public Health, and Dr David Chaplow, the Director of Mental Heath.

In a joint submission, the two Health Ministry chiefs go so far as to wave the Health Act in the city's face saying "one could argue that the low barriers on Grafton Bridge are either a 'nuisance' or a 'condition injurious to health' under the Health Act".

They argue that the council is "remiss if it does not take steps to address this hazard".

But another way of looking at it is that the ministry and the health workers are equally remiss in building crisis mental health facilities alongside a site of fatal attraction to some, at least, of their clients.