Montreal Metro sees rise in suicide attempts. What can be done to prevent them?

< warm>Warning: This story includes inside information well-nigh a dying by felo-de-se.

In the early hours of Dec. 4 last year, an 18-year-old man struggling with his mental health jumped in front of a moving Metro train at Villa-Maria station.

Months earlier, the young man was examined at a health centre after making suicidal comments to his friends. He said he regretted the remarks, explaining that he made them impulsively after arguing with loved ones and experiencing a breakup.

Following that, the 18-year-old was to stay at the home of someone close to him.

Police said the young man was the only one on the Metro platform around 1 a.m. When he ran toward the oncoming train. The operator was unable to stop in time to prevent the collision.

Several farewell letters addressed to his loved ones were found in his room after his death.

The young man's case is among four reports released this week by the Quebec coroner's office, each highlighting a suicide in the Montreal Metro in 2024 and containing joint recommendations for the city’s transit authority to help prevent their occurrence.

Julie-Kim Godin, one of the four coroners involved in the investigations, said the team felt that the number of suicides in the Metro was "worrisome.”  

Between 2015 and 2023, the coroner’s office recorded a total of 92 suicides in the Montreal Metro system — an average of 10 per year.

Annual suicide attempts ranged between 14 and 18 from 2020 to 2023. But that number jumped to 25 in 2024, according to the Société de transport de Montréal (STM).

The STM could not say whether any of these attempts resulted in deaths.

“We felt that the Metro needed more strategies to prevent suicide,” said Godin. 

She and her team came up with several recommendations for the STM. The first is to move up the the completion of the study on the installation of platform screen doors in the Metro — similar to what the REM stations have — which is currently set for 2033.

“It is clear that limiting access to the tracks is one of the most effective ways to prevent suicides in the Metro," read one of the reports.

“Research also suggests that a person in distress will not necessarily seek an alternative way to end their life if the initially identified method is unavailable or difficult to access."

The coroners also recommend safety ambassadors in all stations during all hours of operation, an increase in staff on platforms who are responsible for identifying people in distress and more training for staff.

One of them is a detection system that monitors the presence of people on platforms, allowing train operators to view the upcoming station before the train arrives. 

All station staff have been trained in suicide prevention to detect warning behaviours and report situations so they can be addressed quickly, added the STM. 

It also has a security monitoring room and safety ambassadors, whose roles are also to identify individuals at risk. 

More needed to prevent deaths by suicide in Montreal’s Metro, coroner finds

But platform screen doors, one of the strategies most strongly advocated for by coroners to prevent suicide in the Metro, may not be installed for some time. 

“These are an effective way to complement existing measures to make the Metro safer, but we have not received any funding to go beyond the preliminary studies carried out in recent years,” wrote the STM in its statement, noting that the agency is in an "unprecedented financial situation."

“As we know, the STM is in an unprecedented financial situation, while the implementation of certain recommendations requires funding that is not available.” 

While she understands that funding is a major concern for the city’s transit authority, Godin said it's important to view the doors not just as a cost but as an investment in public safety.

Ella Amir, executive director of AMI-Quebec – an organization supporting people caring for a loved one struggling with mental health – said that while new technology and other precautions to prevent suicide in the Metro are fine, prevention must come “much earlier.” 

“Invest your resources elsewhere.”

For Amir, prevention means increasing the availability and accessibility of services as well as the capacity of people to reach for those services.

“People in high distress are very often not likely to go and seek help on their own. So, I think that it really goes on us as a community, as a society, as mental health-care workers to reach out to these people wherever they are at,” she said.

In addition to making mental health services more user-friendly, Amir said caring for people in distress is a shared responsibility, calling on those around them to be aware of the warning signs.

Meanwhile, a project using artificial intelligence to detect behaviour that could indicate a possible suicide attempt in the Montreal Metro is underway. 

The technology is expected to be used in some stations for a testing phase soon, with the aim of deploying it throughout the Metro network within a year or two. 

If you or someone you know is struggling, here's where to get help:

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