According to a new research, by installing barriers, safety nets and other restrictions at suicide hotspots like bridges, cliffs and railways could reduce the number of suicide cases at these sites by almost 90%.

This was for the first time when a large meta-analysis has showed that a variety of other suicide prevention approaches currently being used at known hotspots around the world have significantly helped to lower the number of deaths at these locations.

Placing signs and crisis telephones, increasing surveillance by using CCTV and suicide patrols are also some of the measure that can be adopted at suicide hotspots.

Lead author Professor Jane Pirkis from the University of Melbourne in Australia, said, “These key interventions have the potential to complement each other and buy time to allow an individual to reconsider their actions and allow others the opportunity to intervene”.

Pirkis and colleagues for the study did a systematic review and meta-analysis of all studied examining the effectiveness of three interventions i.e. restricting access to the means, encouraging help-seeking, and increasing the likelihood of intervention by third party.

The team used modeling to estimate the effects of each intervention in isolation or in combination with other interventions.

The researchers after analyzing data from 23 articles, which were comparing the number of suicides at various hotspots before and after the interventions were introduced, showed that the interventions significantly lowered the number of suicides at these sites.

It was found that the number of deaths reduced on average of 5.8 suicides every year before the interventions were introduced to an average of 2.4 deaths per year after the introduction of interventions.