Los Angeles Metro Unveils New Suicide Prevention Campaign

Fast trains, holiday depression and thoughts of suicide can be a deadly combination, but local commuter rail officials today will unveil a new campaign to save people from themselves.

In addition to Metro and Metrolink officials and representatives from Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, a news conference will include an engineer who operated a train when a person “jumped in front to end their life,” a statement from the groups said. That engineer now responds to suicide-related incidents.

“The holiday period is a time of joy for many, but for other(s) it is a time of sadness and depression,” according to a statement. Metro, the major operator of bus and rail service in Los Angeles County, Metrolink, the nation’s third-largest commuter rail agency, and Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, described a “multi-agency, coordinated suicide prevention effort” to encourage people “who feel sadness or depression during the holiday period to ‘Reach out. There is help.”’

The organizations said that Metro and the health services organization partnered in a successful two-year anti-suicide campaign “that saw incidents decline dramatically on the Metro Blue Line,” which runs from downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach.

The news conference is slated to be held at downtown’s Union Station rail center.

—City News Service

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