A significant percentage of people who come across an obstacle to their planned method of suicide will never try again. They are not intended to go elsewhere.

How would a statistic like this be calculated? We can talk to people who were going to commit suicide, encountered an obstacle, and decided not to. How can we determine how many people decided to commit suicide, encountered an obstacle, and used some other method?

We can look at natural experiments like England's switch away from coal gas, or the introduction of catalytic convertors, and the decline in rates of suicide in the years afterwards. Both these events removed popular methods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWPEVhrWZS0

Start at 6:50 for reducing access to means and methods.

I think that what they're getting at is that once the impulse is not met with success it ceases its grip and might lessen to some extent. Not sure I agree with it but at the same time it is possible that if the means of committing suicide were more easily available and required less upfront effort a lot wouldn't have the time to hesitate and commit to it

Look them up later on and see if they're dead. https://medium.com/@ennyman/a-lesson-from-29-golden-gate-sui...