#suicide-prevention-infrastructure

Where track runs close to psychiatric institutions, add targeted fencing, barriers, or routing/siting changes to break the physical proximity that makes those sections hotspots for patient suicides — a driver generic network-wide measures leave unaddressed.

Install crisis-line signage, supportive messaging, and direct-connection help-points at platforms, bridges, and known hotspots, delivered by operators in partnership with crisis services. A low-cost baseline layer; standalone effect on rail suicide is modest and under-evidenced.

Use CCTV analytics/AI to detect at-risk behaviour (loitering at platform ends, letting trains pass, trackside intrusion) and alert staff in real time — technically promising but without empirical evidence of reducing suicides in practice.

Install full-height platform screen doors (PSDs) — floor-to-ceiling barriers with sliding doors aligned to train doors — to physically seal the platform edge and eliminate track access at stations. This intervention has the strongest evidence of any rail-suicide measure.

Platform screen doors installed across the Hong Kong MTR were associated with a 59.9% reduction in railway suicides, with no evidence of substitution to unsealed platforms. The lower reduction compared to other cities p…

Using monthly panel data from 94 stations over 2008–2017, suicides in the Shanghai metro declined by 90.9% after platform screen doors were installed. The study found no significant evidence of displacement to railway s…

Platform screen doors were installed across Seoul metropolitan subway stations and evaluated using 10 years of monthly data from 121 stations with Poisson regression. Full-height PSDs achieved near-complete elimination…