I read a really interesting article in New York Magazine last week about  how the same things that attract millions of tourists to New York City (the glamour, the skyline, the anonymity) also attracts visitors to come specifically to the city to kill themselves.

…researchers stumbled on a striking fact about suicides in New York: A surprising number of people who kill themselves in the city come here from out of town, and many appear to come expressly to take their own lives. In a report published last fall called Suicide Tourism in Manhattan, New York City, 1990–2004, researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College found that of the 7,634 people who committed suicide in New York City between 1990 and 2004, 407 of them, or 5.3 percent, were nonresidents. More strikingly, nonresidents accounted for 274, or 10.8 percent, of the 2,272 suicides in Manhattan during that time (the numbers did not include college students, who were considered residents for the purposes of the study). The researchers didn’t look at comparable data from other cities, but, says the study’s lead author, Charles Gross, One in ten people that commit suicide in Manhattan don’t live here. That’s a big chunk. [NY Magazine]

and visit http://www.save.org/ for ways you can help prevent suicide.

Related:

New York Magazine (full article)

save.org

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention