A Dual-Intervention Approach to Preventing Railway Suicide: Changing Access to the Track and Responses to People at Risk

Background:

Railway suicides have profound impacts on families, witnesses, and transport systems, but because these events occur in public settings there are opportunities for prevention that do not exist for other methods of suicide. However, strong scientific evidence about what works best to prevent suicide in railway environments is lacking.

Aims:

My early career research program aims to reduce railway suicide by testing two promising approaches: (1) changing the physical environment to make it harder for people to access the tracks, and (2) equipping railway staff and commuters with the skills to recognise and support people who may be in distress. Anticipated findings include that (1) limiting access will significantly reduce railway suicides without causing meaningful displacement to other sites on the railway network or substitution to other suicide methods and (2) that suicide awareness training will increase participants skills and comfort in helping someone in distress and that, over time, it will lead to more real-world interventions across the network.

Methods: Leveraging an unprecedented natural experiment created by large-scale rail infrastructure upgrades occurring across Melbourne Australia, Study 1 will examine whether progressively restricting access to railway tracks through measures such as installation of fencing and the removal of level crossings reduces suicides at specific sites and across the broader network. Crucially, it will also test whether these changes result in people moving to other railway locations (displacement) or using different suicide methods (substitution). Utilising data on more than 12,000 suicides from a suicide register and detailed data on infrastructure changes, this study will use interrupted time series (ITS) analysis and spatially informed regression modelling to evaluate the impact of progressive track access restriction on railway and other suicides.

Study 2 will evaluate a brief, 30-minute online suicide awareness training program for railway staff and commuters. The aim of the training is to teach people how to identify warning signs, ensure their own safety, and help someone seek support in a safe and appropriate way. This study will employ a two-arm stratified randomised controlled trial design. The sample will be stratified into railway staff and commuters (160 staff and 160 commuters). As a secondary outcome, the study will also gather data so that an interrupted time series analysis of actual intervention behaviours can be conducted. Crucially this approach allows evaluation of both proximal outcomes (improvements in knowledge, confidence, willingness to intervene) and distal outcomes (actual interventions).

Conclusion: Together, these studies will provide high-quality evidence on two practical and scalable prevention strategies. My early career research program will rigorously evaluate whether progressive environmental modifications reduce suicides across the railway network, while addressing critical questions of displacement and method substitution that have long constrained policy action. My research will also deliver the first randomised controlled trial of suicide awareness training for both railway staff and commuters. The findings have the potential to influence national and international policies, guide infrastructure decisions, and inform suicide awareness training programs, ultimately helping to prevent suicides.