To reach a suicide prevention hotline, call 888-568-1112 or 800-273-TALK (8255), or visit www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Stephanie Cossette misses her son’s giggle. She misses his smile, his love for their family’s horses and ducks, his closeness with his parents and when his friends came over to hang out in their Eddington garage and work on cars.

Twelve years after his death, Brandon is still her first thought every morning and last thought every night, she said. Then 25, he was one of at least a dozen people who have jumped off the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, which connects coastal Hancock and Waldo counties, since it replaced the Waldo-Hancock Bridge in 2006.  

For years, Brandon had struggled with schizoaffective disorder. He feared people were staring at him in computer science classes at Husson University, so his mother enrolled with him and they graduated together. He heard voices, saw things that weren’t there, couldn’t work because of paranoia and stopped taking his medication.

Scared by his mental illness, he would ask his mother what was going to happen to him.

Both his parents were present when he jumped from the bridge in 2013 during a family outing. He had trouble the night before, but things seemed fine during the day, Stephanie said; they talked about plans for supper with his younger brother.

Stephanie Cossette of Eddington holds a photograph of her late son, Brandon. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

She believes his jump was spontaneous — that something snapped — and he would have been safe that day if the bridge railings had barrier fencing.

Nineteen years into the landmark bridge’s history, that fencing is now being installed along its 2,120-foot span 135 feet above the Penobscot River.

Adding barriers was discussed for years, including during the bridge design process, but two previous legislative proposals failed. Skeptics raised questions about their cost and whether more barriers would have to be installed on other bridges. They suggested people considering jumping off the bridge would find another method, and that changes to the view could reduce tourism. Some said barriers wouldn’t address the root of the problem.

But the bridge became a hotspot for suicides, attracting more people in crisis until political will toward the $2 million project finally started to shift in recent years.

Now, those who lost loved ones there are relieved to see barriers in place and believe they will stop suicides by giving people time to reconsider and seek help — even as the fencing dredges up difficult memories.

For five years after Brandon’s death, it was hard for his mother to leave the house because of post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, flashbacks and overwhelming anxiety. But she started advocating for barriers, inspired by fencing on the Memorial Bridge in Augusta that stopped suicides there completely when it was installed in 1983.

Over the next decade, the process was by turns frustrating and heartbreaking, but Cossette kept going.

“I want his death not to be in vain,” she said. “Some people say you have to leave a legacy. I guess my legacy would be if I could get that barrier built.”

In times of crisis, people can temporarily focus on a particular method of suicide, according to Greg Marley, a former director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Maine chapter who worked with the state Department of Transportation to prevent suicides and later testified for the fencing to lawmakers.

But cutting off that method — such as through a bridge barrier — buys time to intervene and connect them to help. Most won’t seek other methods, studies have shown, and Marley said the majority of people in crisis make it through.

Barrier fencing is currently being installed on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

As barrier skeptics have highlighted, suicide in Maine reaches far beyond one bridge. The state’s 2022 rate was more than six percentage points higher than the national average, at 22.7 suicides per 100,000 people compared with 16.4 nationwide, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. It was the second leading cause of death for Mainers between the ages of 15 and 34.

Falls and drownings together make up a small percentage of those deaths. That was one reason for hesitation over the price tag when a fencing proposal came before the Legislature in 2014, though lawmakers said that bill ultimately failed because there wasn’t time to review it.

Some testified — and others still argue — that the barriers would ruin the view or hurt tourism, and that people determined to end their lives would find another way. They suggested investing in other suicide prevention efforts with a wider reach.

In 2014, Bucksport’s then-economic development director, David Milan, testified against the bill on behalf of the Town Council. As a 26-year veteran of the local police force, he said he had talked more people off the Waldo-Hancock Bridge than anyone else and was heavily involved in designing the new one.

He understood why the proposal was made, he said, but suggested the limited funds be used on other efforts that could reach more people, such as working with journalism schools to try to reduce the “copycat suicides” that can happen when these deaths are reported in detail.

Other measures were taken before the eventual approval of the fencing. Crisis hotline phones and signage were installed at both ends of the bridge. NAMI offered media training. But the phones were out of order during at least one suicide, and people continued to jump.

Barrier fencing is currently being installed on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik

The bridge had become a hotspot, making clear that something more needed to be done, according to Marley.

The Piscataqua River Bridge connecting the state to New Hampshire is another such spot in Maine. Advocates are putting suicide prevention signs there this year and will push for barriers on it and two others nearby after recent suicides, according to the Portsmouth Herald.

The hotspots are accessible, lethal and have a known history of suicides, Marley said. They’re also landmarks.

“You see that bridge, and it is majestic,” he said. “It’s so visible, it’s so striking, and that’s a piece of it.”

A second bill proposing the barriers came before lawmakers in 2019, but was unsuccessful. In 2023, a third passed, directing the DOT to construct the barriers and providing $1.2 million in state funding with an $800,000 federal contribution. After a yearlong delay to retest the design, fencing started to go up in late April.

“We designed the bridge and built it. We constructed the railing for the safety of cars but ignored the risks to people experiencing the temporary and often fleeting thoughts of ending their lives,” Sen. Chip Curry, D-Waldo, testified when he presented that bill. “Now that we know that it has become a suicide hotspot, we have a duty to act.”

Steve Norman, whose 30-year-old daughter Siri jumped from the bridge in 2021, supported Curry’s bill.

Norman remembers his daughter as “a wonderful person”: lively, brilliant, intense and creative. He believes if there was a barrier, her impulse would have passed. He said that when the fencing works, other families won’t know they have been spared from the suffering, pain and loss her loved ones feel.

“There’s no opportunity to work things out and fix things once you’ve gone over the edge,” he said. “If there’s a barrier, you can fix things.”

First responders Bobby Conary and Richard Crampton search for a body in the Penobscot River in 2018 after a report that another person had jumped from the bridge above, which became a suicide hotspot in the state. On such searches, Conary said, they don’t expect to find one. Courtesy: Orland Fire Department

As a public site, the suicides from the bridge could also have ripple effects on eyewitnesses and responders. A construction worker who was disassembling the Waldo-Hancock Bridge pulled Cossette’s son’s body from the water that day in 2013 and told her years later that he still had nightmares, she said.

It can be emotionally difficult for first responders to search the river, though in a different way than when they respond to car crashes or fires, according to Orland Fire Chief Bobby Conary.

He has mixed feelings about the fencing. Knowing people have traveled for hours to reach the bridge, he wonders if they will find another way once they have been deterred, but he hopes the barriers will help.

Marley encourages people to look for warning signs and take action if they’re worried about someone in their life. Often, families tell him they wish they had asked their loved one directly if they were having thoughts of suicide. He said it’s critical to talk openly about suicide and let people know that effective help is available.

Cossette has observed the subject discussed more since Brandon’s death and noticed online comments about the concept of bridge barriers becoming more supportive.

While she feels progress has been made, society still has a ways to go in helping people like Brandon who struggle with mental illness, she said.

A dozen years later, this is the first spring she has felt OK, but she still avoids the bridge when visiting her mother in Bucksport. Though at times she wished she’d died with him, she’s glad she didn’t; with her younger son and a granddaughter nearby, life is good.

But Brandon stays with her, and it helps to know he’s remembered. One of his friends recently texted her that he visited his grave. She finds pebbles there, signs that people still come to see him.

“I don’t want him forgotten, and that’s another thing with the barrier,” she said. “I think it means he’s not forgotten. Because of him, and others, there is this barrier.”