Article: Hidden tragedy of rail suicides

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Hidden tragedy of rail suicides

Hidden tragedy of rail suicides
June 4, 2012

A LIFE ends violently on Victoria's railway tracks almost every week. And with each bloody fatality, the high cost falls upon grieving families, traumatised train drivers and the wider community.

It is a confronting and rarely told story beyond cold, rail-hard statistics, because of the nature of most of the deaths.

Figures obtained exclusively by The Age show 46 people died on the state's rail network between July 1, 2010, and the end of June last year.

Most cases were suicides, according to Transport Safety Victoria statistics, with an average of 34 people a year using Victoria's rail network to take their own lives since 2006.

Victoria's railway suicide toll is the highest in the country, leading to calls from state government departments for train fatality blackspots to be made ''suicide proof''.

Officials point to the 90 per cent of Victoria's railway lines that are unfenced. Yet, according to state government figures from 2007-08, the entire metropolitan network could be fenced for about $82 million, $130 million less than the cost of the Baillieu government's promise to deploy 940 armed protective service officers at train stations.

Five years ago, researchers from Melbourne University's Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health described rail suicides as an ''emerging public health problem'' to be treated as a high priority.

But despite widespread concerns, the issue has been hidden from the public because of a taboo on the recording and media reporting of suicides. Little, if any, action has been taken.

Now, mental health experts recommend a new approach to suicide reporting by the media that neither hides nor softens a major public health, workplace safety and community issue.

Nevertheless, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau does not count suicides in the official figures of rail fatalities.

These deaths can cause havoc with the rail system.

Melbourne's former rail operator, Connex, estimated that in less than three years suicides had caused immediate travel delays that represented 23 years of lost productivity.

During the same period, the trauma to employees led to the loss of more than 2000 working days and a counselling bill of nearly $50,000.

Metro and V/Line refused to comment on what support they gave drivers involved in fatalities or, indeed, on anything regarding suicides or deaths on the network.

A Metro spokesman told The Age the issue was too sensitive for staff. ''This is a complex area that we don't feel needs any public discussion,'' he said.

Yet Metro is a partner in a new national public awareness campaign, TrackSAFE, launched last month, which aims to cut rail deaths, including suicides.

Train drivers, some of whom have witnessed several deaths, have told The Age they are haunted by the last moments of people they have watched die.

One driver was involved in an accident that killed a three-year-old boy in Wallace, near Ballarat, last year and another has been diagnosed with a serious mental disorder as a result of at least five deaths under his trains in a 30-year career.

Another driver described feeling like a Vietnam War veteran because of a lack of acknowledgement of the trauma he had experienced.

Andrea Phelps, the Australian Centre for Post-traumatic Mental Health's acting director of policy and service development, said it was important for drivers' mental health that their experiences be validated by the general community.

Drivers' trauma was often heightened by being powerless to prevent an imminent death, she said.

Mental health expert and former Australian of the year Patrick McGorry said the mental health of train drivers was at risk daily. But he said those who took their own lives were desperate and it was important not to forget their grieving families and loved ones.

''I feel really sorry for the drivers and also all the families traumatised when people die. Trauma is very damaging for [the drivers'] mental health,'' Professor McGorry said. ''It's a massive occupational health and safety hazard for these people.''

He welcomes recently updated media guidelines on suicide reporting that no longer recommend a blanket ban on the subject. They are part of the government-backed Mindframe mental health initiative.

Professor McGorry said a taboo on discussing suicide meant many Australians were unaware more people died as a result of suicide than in road accidents.

For help or information visit beyondblue.org.au, call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251, or Lifeline on 131 114.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/hidden-tragedy-of-rail-suicides-20120603-1zq87.html

[ozbob]

Never been happy about suicide being suppressed in the media.  The rail component of suicide deaths is relatively small (total suicides all methods is greater than road toll fatalities - it is possible that some of the road fatalities are suicides as well), but none the less all attempts should be made to minimise/eliminate.  In an ideal world all transport corridors would be secure.  That is not going to happen.  Fencing is not the absolute answer, roads are generally not fenced as well.  Railways in Victoria are generally not fenced.  The problem of suicides on transport corridors, rail and roads has always been there but is increasing of late.  It is a broader social society problem, and function of population density and so forth.

Most suicides / attempts are hanging or drug (medications) overdoses however. 

In 2010, the most frequent method of suicide was hanging, strangulation and suffocation (X70), a method used in slightly more than half (56.2%) of all suicide deaths. Poisoning by drugs was used in 12.2% of suicide deaths, followed by poisoning by other methods including by alcohol and motor vehicle exhaust (10.0%). Methods using firearms accounted for 6.9% of suicide deaths. The remaining suicide deaths included deaths from drowning, jumping from a high place, and other methods.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/94BBA3060FC0657BCA2579C6001B676E?opendocument

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

State fails to act as hundreds die

State fails to act as hundreds die
June 5, 2012

AT LEAST five people have died at an east suburban Melbourne railway black spot since a government working party recommended ''suicide proofing'' measures five years ago.

No action has been taken at that black spot — or at others — despite at least $2.2 million in funding allocated for trial suicide-prevention measures in recent years.

With most of the Melbourne rail network unfenced, Victoria has the highest railway suicide rate in Australia — until now a rarely acknowledged issue that takes a heavy toll on train drivers and other rail workers, emergency responders, commuters and network timetables.

Research obtained by The Age reveals more than 200 people committed suicide on the state's rail network between between 2001 and 2007.

In 2008, a rail suicide working party identified a black spot in Melbourne's outer east. One  train station, which The Age has chosen not to identify, had the highest rail suicide rate of any station between 2006 and 2011.

The working party recommended trial protective measures  — clearing trees and shrubs, and adding security fencing and lighting, Lifeline signs and a public telephone — and the project received state  funding. But the trial is yet to begin.

In the past six years, seven people have taken their lives at the black spot and 11 have been injured there attempting suicide, according to documents collected by The Age under freedom-of-information laws.

A successful trial would have led to more safety measures at seven other railway suicide black spots, which Public Transport Victoria blacked out of FOI documents obtained by The Age.

A spokesman for Public Transport Victoria, which co-ordinates the state's public transport network, said fencing would be erected at the outer-eastern trial site, but he could not say when.

"[Rail operator] Metro is currently working with the local council to finalise the exact location of the fencing," the spokesman said. Metro would not comment on the trial.

Funding of $1.2 million — $150,000 for eight ''hot spots'' — was allocated by the Labor government in 2008. At the time, rail suicide working party chairman Terry Spicer said the humanitarian value would be priceless. He warned that if  measures were not taken, the death toll would rise.

''While no initiatives are taken to address this whole-of-government and community problem, the rate of suicide will continue to grow,'' he said in 2008. Mr Spicer now works for the Transport Department and was not available for comment.

A spokeswoman for Transport Minister Terry Mulder yesterday said the minister was concerned about the high rate of rail suicide, and the government would consider fencing the network.

''The government will consider advice received that may improve rail safety,'' she said.

Research commissioned by the working party from the Monash Accident Research Centre, and obtained by The Age through freedom-of-information laws, reveals Victoria's rail suicide toll is by far the highest in Australia, with 206 deaths between 2001 and 2007 — 74 more than in New South Wales and 150 more than in Queensland.

Overall suicide rates in Victoria are falling, according to mental health support networks.

Monash researchers found that about 90 per cent of Melbourne's rail network was unfenced and 70 per cent of rail suicides were taking place on open tracks between stations.

''Victoria's higher [rail suicide rate] is most likely attributable to a substantially less fenced rail network and therefore more accessible rail track compared with at least Queensland and NSW,'' the researchers said.

Metropolitan tracks in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide are fenced, according to the local rail operators.

The Infrastructure Department working party estimated that fencing the Melbourne rail network would cost about $82 million, $130 million less than training 940 protective service officers for rail stations.

The working party also relied on Australian and international research that found suicides were often the result of spur-of-the-moment decisions and that people deterred at any point, in most cases, did not persist.

The then director of public transport, Jim Betts, set up the working party to deal with an emerging problem that was costing lives, emotionally scarring staff — especially train drivers — and disrupting rail services.

Mr Betts is now head of the Transport Department.

In February 2010, the department advised Metro that an additional $1 million in funding had been granted to trial more than eight kilometres of fencing in the eastern suburbs, with 13 pedestrian gates, 16 vehicle gates and 52 signs. A month later, Metro chief executive officer Andrew Lezala confirmed the project would be included in the company's ''maintenance and renewal program''.

Metro and Public Transport Victoria have recently applied for federal funding to improve safety at suicide black spots.

"PTV undertakes extensive research into this vital issue and is recognised as being a leader in this field," a Public Transport Victoria spokesman said.

For help visit beyondblue.org.au, call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251, or Lifeline on 131 114.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/state-fails-to-act-as-hundreds-die-20120604-1zs9c.html

[ozbob]

4 June 2012

G'day Mex,

I was glad to see your article in today's Age re rail suicide. 

Never been happy about suicide being suppressed in the media.  The rail component of suicide deaths is relatively small (total suicides all methods is greater than road toll fatalities - it is possible that some of the road fatalities are suicides as well), but none the less all attempts should be made to minimise/eliminate.  In an ideal world all transport corridors would be secure.  That is not going to happen.  Fencing is not the absolute answer, roads are generally not fenced as well.  Railways in Victoria are generally not fenced.  The problem of suicides on transport corridors, rail and roads has always been there but is increasing of late.  It is a broader social society problem, and function of population density and so forth.

Most suicides / attempts are hanging or drug (medications) overdoses however.

In 2010, the most frequent method of suicide was hanging, strangulation and suffocation (X70), a method used in slightly more than half (56.2%) of all suicide deaths. Poisoning by drugs was used in 12.2% of suicide deaths, followed by poisoning by other methods including by alcohol and motor vehicle exhaust (10.0%). Methods using firearms accounted for 6.9% of suicide deaths. The remaining suicide deaths included deaths from drowning, jumping from a high place, and other methods.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/94BBA3060FC0657BCA2579C6001B676E?opendocument

Here is Queensland the suburban rail corridors are fenced,  I think that can assist, but the suicides still occur. 

We need as a society to look at the real causes.

Best wishes
Robert

Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org
RAIL Back On Track http://backontrack.org

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

The train driver's torment

The train driver's torment
June 5, 2012

The trauma of a rail death can last a lifetime for people at the controls.

FOR DECADES, new train drivers were never warned of the horrors they could face on the tracks. Veteran V/Line driver Peter Smith describes it as being ''thrown to the wolves''.

Semi-retired after 40 years driving trains on Victoria's metropolitan and regional lines, Smith believes he's become inured to rail accidents.

The first time a train he was driving struck and killed someone he didn't know about it until the following day. He never saw the person and says he emotionally moved on quickly from the accident.

The second death happened about three years into his driving career. He went right on working. There was no counselling offered and, at the time, drivers were reluctant to take leave as work compensation payments only covered about 80 per cent of their wages.

''It was like you were being punished for what happened so there wasn't much encouragement to have a lot of time off in those days,'' Smith says.

During his career, Smith has been involved in three fatal accidents and another in which a woman lost both legs.

The divorced father-of-five and grandfather-of-14 has proved more resilient than others but he says one death in particular, that of a 17-year-old boy, has never left him.

''That knocked me around a bit that one,'' he says with understatement. ''It just never goes away, it's always there. You think you switch off to it, but there's always things that bring you back to it.''

International research has found that up to 16 per cent of drivers who experience a ''person-under-train event'' develop post-traumatic stress disorder and more than 30 per cent develop other mental health issues, including depression and anxiety disorder.

Melbourne University's Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health found drivers exposed to these events had twice as much time off work as other drivers, one year after an incident.

Five veteran train drivers who spoke to The Age about the traumatic events they had witnessed and the impact they had, all said that at the beginning of their careers they had no idea, and received no warnings, about the frequency or impact of rail accidents and deaths.

The acting director of policy and service development at the Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, Andrea Phelps, says the more people are prepared for traumatic events, the more resilient they may be.

''They can enhance their reserves and know what to do and how to deal with it if it occurs,'' she says.

Figures obtained exclusively by The Age reveal a person dies nearly every week on Victoria's rail network, mostly as a result of suicide.

But V/Line driver Michael Hinch believes the death toll is closer to one person every day. Hinch witnessed his first death when he was a trainee driver aged just 17. For more than three decades, during which he was involved in five other fatalities and 17 major accidents, he blocked out the death.

In counselling sessions, when asked to write down his fatalities, he would never include the first he had seen or recall the screams of the senior driver calling ''red light, red light'' - words reserved for emergencies - as the train bore down on the man in 1976.

Then one day he found himself driving through the same location. He peered out the windscreen and found he was no longer looking out the window of a modern VLocity train. The long dormant memory surfaced and suddenly he was looking down the long front of the train he had been in 33 years earlier and the man was again about to die in front of him.

''It's suddenly all flooded back and I could see it like I was looking into a TV set,'' he says.

A counsellor told him the experience was a normal response to a traumatic event, as are the nightmares that plague him and many other drivers.

Phelps says that when speaking with train drivers, she has been particularly struck by their feelings of powerlessness as they are forced to watch a fate unfold that they cannot change.

''They know what's going to happen but they can't do anything to prevent it because of the time it takes to stop a vehicle so you've got all of that time, which might only be a matter of seconds but often feels as though it's a lifetime, when you know what's going to happen but you can't do anything about it,'' she says.

Tim*, a 30-year rail veteran, says apart from applying the emergency brake, unlike in a car, there is little evasive action a train driver can take.

Tim has been involved in two fatal accidents and a number of level-crossing car accidents. He knows a colleague who has witnessed 14 deaths.

He says the trauma experienced by drivers is often heightened by the time lag between when a driver realises they are about to be in a collision and the actual impact. Former train driver James* describes it as time slowing down.

''Sometimes it seems like minutes before it does and you never forget it, it's always there,'' he says.

When James began working on the railways, aged just 17 in the early 1970s, fatalities were never discussed.

Later, when he began to witness deaths and accidents, he found a macho culture in which train drivers carried their burdens without tears or talk to be oppressive.

''You couldn't be seen to be weak. If something like that happened and you were having problems coping with it, the managers would just say, 'Get over it, don't worry about it' and that was the way it was,'' James says.

''You couldn't be seen to be weak with your workmates because the first thing they'd tell you is, 'Well, so and so, he's had 10 and he's had 13 and he's all right, what's wrong with you?' ''

The stress was too much for James' marriage, which disintegrated after four years and the birth of his son.

''I just started getting snappy, had trouble sleeping, got very angry and I couldn't understand why,'' he said. ''I didn't want to do things. I'd just go and find a hole to crawl into and it just destroyed the marriage.''

He moved to the city for a fresh start and began new relationships, but another accident would happen and the pressure would again begin to build. Eventually he left the industry and has since been diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder.

He can't say how many deaths and near-misses he witnessed during 30 years working on the railways.

''The more it happens the more memories you get with the noises and so forth and it's compounded throughout your career.''

He thinks he saw five people die, but his memory is no longer reliable. Every morning, he leaves his breakfast dishes in the sink so he knows he's eaten and forgets addresses he has visited countless times.

If someone asks him what he did at lunch, he not only can't recall, he has no memories to grasp that will prompt others. It's like trying to complete a crossword puzzle without the clues.

But at night the memories return. The sounds of screams and screeching brakes and thoughts of the dead person's final moments steal his sleep.

Paul* knows the torment of the dark and quiet hours. He had his first fatality after nearly 30 years as a train driver last October. His already red-rimmed eyes fill with tears and redden further when he talks about the day the train he was driving hit and killed a three-year-old boy in Wallace, near Ballarat.

''You think about it at night times, they are probably the worst. That's when it normally comes back to haunt you,'' he says.

Paul could not speak when he realised his train had hit the local boy who had wandered on to tracks from a nearby backyard. Incredibly, a four-year-old girl playing with him survived unscathed.

Another train driver happened to be travelling on the train at the time of the accident and checked on the children while Paul's emotions imploded.

''I thought, 'I've just killed two kids' and it was, I just can't describe the grief you feel,'' Paul says as he sheds more tears.

The second driver was stunned to find the girl up and moving, but the boy's condition was grave.

Then Paul was told the boy was alive and with paramedics. Relief washed over him but it lasted only a moment. ''All I could think about was the little boy,'' he says quietly, after stopping for a moment to gather himself.

''I knew the girl was OK ... the little fella ... I thought there might have been some hope for him.'' The boy later died in hospital.

A V/Line internal investigation has cleared Paul of any wrongdoing. He is still waiting to hear if he will have to give evidence at a coronial inquest.

Counselling has helped, but the tragedy has taken its toll on him and his family, particularly his 80-year-old mother.

Yet he knows the boy's family is enduring unimaginable pain.

Paul returned to work three weeks after the Wallace accident but now drives on a different line after the constant trips back to the accident scene became too much to bear.

There was a time when he did not think he'd ever be able to look at a train again. He would crouch behind fences to avoid seeing or hearing one pass.

But the railways are in his blood; between himself, his father, sister, aunts and uncles, his family has clocked up 140 years in the industry.

Other drivers inundated Paul with cards and messages. ''They all said you've got to get back to work. And that's from guys who've been through similar incidents - because if you don't get back, you fall into an even deeper hole and that's not good for your psychological health long-term,'' he says.

In the 1970s, the suburb of Braybrook, in Melbourne's west, was filled with railway families living cheek by jowl in a supportive and tight community. ''In those days, there was an unofficial committee, if you had a fatality ... three or four blokes would come down to your house that night with a dozen bottles of beer under their arm,'' Hinch says.

''They'd kick the wife out, they'd sit you down, they'd pump beer into you until tears came out and they'd say, 'You're all right chap, back to work tomorrow'.''

The railway communities have long since dispersed, but the drivers believe peer-to-peer counselling still has its place and should be offered to those who feel more comfortable talking to an experienced colleague than a psychologist about their experiences.

Back in 2007, a state government rail suicide working party, set up by Victoria's then department of infrastructure, recommended ''suicide proofing'' railway stations known to be fatality hot spots.

But it seems little action has been taken since the working party's chairman, Terry Spicer, warned that if nothing was done to reduce rail deaths, drivers might start suing for the trauma they had endured.

''Ultimately, it is likely that an occupational health and safety case will be made for failing to address or mitigate a known hazard, particularly in the case of train drivers who are the people who are most involved, first on the scene after a collision with the individual intent on suicide and most affected by trauma,'' he said in 2008.

''In extreme cases, drivers are traumatised to the point of being unable to return to work.''

Liberty Sanger, a principal at Maurice Blackburn in Melbourne, says if a driver ''in the course of their employment suffers a psychiatric injury and it was reasonably foreseeable that a psychiatric injury would result by the failure of their employer to do something, or the act of an employer'', then they could have a case.

The drivers who spoke to The Age do not want more compensation - since 2008, drivers receive automatic compensation payments from the Department of Transport after a fatality - they want fewer deaths.

They are sympathetic to the families and loved ones of those who have died on the railways, both accidentally and deliberately.

They feel sadness at the complacency around trains that has caused the deaths of some and compassion for those who have felt so desperate they have chosen to end their own lives.

They want people to remember that trains involved in accidents are made of more than metal.

''Don't think of it as a train or a machine. It's a driver, not just a train,'' Paul says.

For help or information visit beyond blue.org.au, call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251, or Lifeline on 131 114.

* Names have been changed

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-train-drivers-torment-20120604-1zrxp.html

[ozbob]

Melbourne Age --> One girl's search for elusive answers amid the grief of teenage rail suicide

[ozbob]

Melbourne Age --> Rail staff to train in self-harm awareness