40,000 Suicides Annually in America .. That's 1 every 13 Minutes ...

Standing high above the San Francisco Bay, perched on an I-beam outside the Golden Gate Bridge railing, the man dressed neatly in khakis and a button-down shirt hesitated.

Kevin Briggs stood a few feet away, imploring him not to jump. In nearly 20 years as a California Highway Patrol officer policing the famous span, Briggs had more success than failure in talking troubled souls back from the ledge.

He and two other officers persisted for nearly an hour on this day in 2007, and the man, perhaps 35 years old, seemed touched by their earnestness. He reached over three separate times to shake Briggs' hand.

Then it was suddenly over. "He said, 'Kevin, thank you very much,' " Briggs recalls quietly, "and he left."

The man plummeted to his death in the waters below.

There's a suicide in the USA every 13 minutes.

A short ride from the Golden Gate Bridge where about 1,600 of these deaths have occurred over the years, actor-comedian Robin Williams took his life at his Tiburon home in August.

Americans are far more likely to kill themselves than each other. Homicides have fallen by half since 1991, but the U.S. suicide rate keeps climbing. The nearly 40,000 American lives lost each year make suicide the nation's 10th-leading cause of death, and the second-leading killer for those ages 15-34. Each suicide costs society about $1 million in medical and lost-work expenses and emotionally victimizes an average of 10 other people.

Yet a national effort to stem this raging river of self-destruction — 90% of which occurs among Americans suffering mental illness — is in disarray.

In a series of stories this year, USA TODAY explores the human cost of allowing 10 million Americans with mental illness to languish without care. On the dark edge of that spectrum is a consuming urge to die, and those committed to understanding suicide say there are potential solutions if there is a national will to seize on them.

Read the rest of the series HERE and view related videos below:

Retired California Highway Patrol officer Kevin Briggs spent 20 years patrolling the Golden Gate Bridge, which has been the site of about 1,600 suicides since it opened:

This video animation gives a perspective of the rate at which people are taking their own lives globally:

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