One summer morning in June 2022, a young man walks with steady steps onto a high bridge above deep, dark water.
His name is Wilfred Poulsen. He is 21, and he just wants to get away from here.
He stops in the middle of the bridge, climbs over the railing, and jumps.
He spins through the air on his way down to the water.
Time stands still.
He can feel his heart pounding, but he can also feel something else:
He regrets it. Then everything goes dark.
Not far from there, two middle-aged brothers set out onto the water in a small ferry.
They have no idea about the young man.
But by chance, the encounter between Wilfred and the two brothers becomes the decisive difference between life and death for him.
Wilfred Poulsen was born in May 2001. He grew up in Faxe, in southern Zealand, in a stable family with loving parents and a younger sister three years his junior. He was a sensitive boy who absorbed everything. It was as if his brain was overstimulated, and he wrestled with thoughts far too big about the meaning of life.
He was 12 in 2013 when he began hearing voices and grew steadily worse. His parents had him admitted to the adolescent psychiatric ward in Roskilde, where he lived for more than seven months. There he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; he was given medication and therapy sessions, and when he was discharged, he was doing much better. He finished ninth grade in 2017 with good marks, trained for triathlons in his spare time, and had close, solid friendships.
But after grade school, he wanted to be like other teenagers. He stopped taking his medication, and after that everything spiraled out of control. He became wildly manic. Life was a blur, lots of girls and lots of drugs. Hash, benzodiazepines, and OxyContin. He moved into a youth apartment and started an upper-secondary program, but quickly dropped out.
Wilfred felt unstoppable. He wasn’t worried, but his family was. He grew far too thin because he ate only when he came home to visit. Most of the time, he lived on snus, hash, and yogurt.
In 2018, he was hospitalized again. This time in a locked ward. An emergency admission. But Wilfred ran away. He was frustrated and felt it was a defeat to have ended up on a psychiatric ward again.
- Wilfred’s story has been reconstructed in drawings based on the main characters’ memories and a return visit to the scene. In keeping with guidelines for reporting on suicide, we are withholding the precise location.
- The World Health Organization advises against describing methods of suicide, but research suggests that stories of suicide attempts that are stopped or regretted can help prevent suicide. Politiken has therefore concluded, after collective considerations, that Wilfred’s story about jumping from the bridge serves a broader public purpose by informing readers. In keeping with guidelines for reporting on suicide, we are withholding the precise location.
- Politiken had experts in suicide prevention review the story ahead of publication to ensure it meets ethical standards.
The following years were a roller-coaster ride: severe substance abuse, self-harm, compulsive gambling, steroids, and a suspended sentence for credit-card fraud. Psychologically, Wilfred was miserable. He swung between psychosis and depression and tried several times to take his own life. Each time, other people assured him there was plenty to live for and that he would go on to have a good life. But that wasn’t how it felt inside.
He also didn’t feel the doctors listened, and he was often in conflict with staff at the three different residential facilities where he eventually lived. During a hospitalization in 2021, a doctor got the idea that Wilfred might be bipolar, and a long process began of trying to medicate him correctly. It was difficult, and Wilfred was admitted again and again and again. More than 15 times. In total, he has spent three and a half years of his life hospitalized.
It was during one of his many hospitalizations that Wilfred, in June 2022, once again decided he would try to take his own life. He had been admitted to a locked psychiatric ward, and his phone had been confiscated because of his gambling addiction. The only thing he had in his room was a radio with a bad antenna that could pick up only local stations. They played ’Hjem fra fabrikken’ by Andreas Odbjerg over and over, until the lyrics echoed in Wilfred’s head.
There was nothing left. He did not feel that anyone wished him well. There was nothing in his life that wasn’t hard, and he was filled with self-loathing. It felt like living in a house where everything is broken, and every time you fix one cabinet door, another one falls off. His life felt like an endless string of misfortunes.
Wilfred wanted to get away from it all. He began to plan how he could act on his suicidal thoughts. It was the run-up to a weekend, and he managed to persuade the staff to transfer him to an open ward. As he lay down to sleep, he thought it was his last night alive. His mind circled around no one and nothing. Everything was switched off. There were no feelings in him. Just emptiness.
In the morning, he took his medication and then called his parents. He told them he knew they had done everything they could and that they would always mean a great deal to him. He told them he loved them.
His mother and father could tell he was going to try to take his own life. And as soon as he hung up, they called him again and again. But Wilfred did not hear their calls. He had put his phone on ’do not disturb’ and left the psychiatric ward. He thought jumping off a bridge was a sure method. His plan was to hit the water and die instantly.
A couple of kilometers away, the brothers Carsten and Claus Madsen, 52 and 68, were on their way to work aboard ’Yrsa’, a blue-and-white-painted flat-bottomed cattle ferry. The two brothers were going to pick up some cows to be ferried to a grazing area on a nearby island. When they left the harbor just before 8 a.m., the sun was shining from a clear blue sky, there was hardly any wind, and the morning temperature was around 12 degrees.
Claus stood at the helm, steering the ferry through the channel. It was a spectacular day, Carsten thought, and out on the water they were treated to something special. A dolphin, known locally as Delle, swam up and seemed to want to play with the ferry. It dove down along one side of the ’Yrsa’ and surfaced on the other. Again and again. It’s unbelievable how crazy it is about the boat, Claus thought. It was one of those mornings you never forget.
Wilfred headed toward the bridge with quick, purposeful steps, his eyes fixed on the paving stones. It was about a 20-minute walk to the bridge’s highest point. In his body, he felt nothing, and yet everything hurt. He tried to reach for his deepest, most inward rage and self-loathing and shut everything else out.
He knew distractions could make him lose his nerve, so he kept himself locked onto the thought. A cyclist rode past, but he avoided eye contact. In his headphones, a song from his playlist was on repeat: Amber Run’s ’I Found’.
He had only one thought in his head: that he could not back out. He had to jump quickly, not sit with his legs dangling over the railing and cry first. It could not be another defeat.
When he reached the middle of the bridge, he stopped. It was like jumping off the high diving board at the pool, he thought. Don’t look down. Beneath the bridge’s concrete span, the dark seawater rushed by, and through Wilfred’s headphones, the music poured on.
He took off his brown leather sandals, put his iPhone in one of them, climbed over the railing and jumped. As his feet left the edge, it was as if he fell for 100 years.
He felt as if a memory center inside his head had been unlocked. Images from his life flickered through his mind, and he felt regret.
Wilfred hit the water far below. It stayed dark for a long time, and he was certain he was dead.
When he surfaced, he thought he had arrived in a new life, but then it dawned on him that he had survived. He looked around and thought: ’What do I do now?’. He did not want to drown.
A violent undertow tried to pull him under. And staying alive in the freezing, churning water was unimaginably hard. Wilfred didn’t know it, but he had fractured his pelvis, one hip and two ribs. And his tailbone was shattered. He still couldn’t feel the pain, but he was afraid.
He had to ration his energy. So he chose to lie on his back and float, and his body slowly drifted with the current to the far side of the bridge. Above him, a line of cars and people had gathered, and he could hear a man shouting: »What are you doing, you idiot!?«.
Wilfred shouted back: »I just wanted to die«.
Aboard the cattle ferry ’Yrsa’, Claus and Carsten Madsen were moving steadily through the water when they heard a call over the ship’s radio about »a possible jumper« from a nearby bridge. Half a kilometer ahead, they could see the bridge piers. Shortly after, the Navy’s Operational Command hailed the ’Yrsa’ directly over the radio and asked whether Claus and Carsten could join the search.
Claus pushed the ferry to full throttle, heading straight for the bridge. Carsten stood by the rail, scanning the surface. As they drew closer, he could make out a group of people up on the bridge, pointing toward a spot in the water not far away.
Wilfred alternated between floating on his back and trying to swim toward shore. But the current was too strong, and the injuries in his body too severe. He could feel the adrenaline draining away and his strength beginning to fail. His legs, arms and feet were starting to burn with lactic acid. He couldn’t hold on much longer.
Claus steered the ferry a bit closer to shore, and suddenly both brothers spotted a hand sticking up out of the water not far from the coast. Because the ferry is used to load cattle directly from land, it has a flat bottom. And that was Wilfred’s luck. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to make it into such shallow water. Claus steered toward the person at the surface and lowered the ship’s ramp, while Carsten went to the edge, ready to haul him aboard.
To Wilfred, it seemed as if the ferry appeared out of nowhere, and he didn’t register the boat until it was right beside him. He raised an arm, and the next thing he felt was someone grabbing his shoulders and pulling him out of the water and onto the ferry’s deck. As he lay on his stomach, the pain suddenly came rushing in. It was more violent than anything he had ever experienced.
As Carsten pulled Wilfred aboard, he whimpered in pain. From the wheelhouse, Claus shouted anxiously: »What’s his status? Is he alive?« Carsten answered yes. The young man was alive, but he didn’t know how badly he was injured. Wilfred looked up at him and said: »Thank you for saving my life«.
The summer sun beat down on the deck, but Wilfred was shaking with cold. Carsten took his hoodie, rolled it up, and placed it under Wilfred’s head.
The ferry headed for the beach, where rescue workers were standing by to receive Wilfred. The trip took only 10 minutes. Paramedics lifted Wilfred onto a stretcher. And then Claus and Carsten set out on the water again. They were in a hurry because they were behind schedule, and ahead of them a herd of cows was waiting.
As Wilfred lay in the ambulance, the police called his mother and father and told them what had happened. His parents immediately drove to the hospital. The next thing Wilfred could remember was waking up in a trauma bay. He thought about how he would apologize to his parents and his little sister. When his family arrived, they were distraught and in tears.
Wilfred was glad to have been given his life back, but he was deeply ashamed of what he had done. He was hospitalized for a month, spending the first stretch in a wheelchair, but after just six weeks he had begun running training. A few months later, he decided to change his name. Before, he was called Kristoffer. But when he read about himself in his medical chart, he thought: That isn’t me. He was no longer that person.
Three years have passed since the suicide attempt, and every year in June Wilfred has returned to the bridge on what he now calls his birthday. He has not seen Carsten and Claus since they pulled him from the water and ferried him back to shore. But each has thought about the others. And one autumn day in 2025, they agree to meet at the spot where they saved his life.
Wilfred arrives early. He looks out over the water from the beach where the ferry once docked. Shortly afterward, Carsten arrives in a white pickup. When he isn’t sailing with his older brother Claus, he is a farmer.
»We’re hugging, aren’t we?«, Wilfred asks as he reaches out his hand. He pulls Carsten in and says: »It’s nice you could make it«.
- We would rather not talk about suicide. Not when someone we love dies by suicide, and not when we are thinking about it ourselves.
- But according to experts, a new public conversation is needed. Sharing knowledge about suicide in a thoughtful, constructive way can help save lives. That is why the World Health Organization has updated its guidelines in this area — and why the media have done so as well.
- Since 2007, the number of suicides in Denmark has remained largely flat, at around 550 to 650 a year, and the country has committed to reducing that figure by one-third by 2030.
- So let’s talk about suicide. The conversation starts here.
They walk along the water and talk about what happened in June 2022, what each of them remembers.
»When you were lying on the deck, I asked you why you’d gone and pulled that stunt«, Carsten says. »Whether it had something to do with some crazy women«.
Wilfred laughs. He’d forgotten that.
»I was really lucky«, he says. »So much fell my way«.
»Yeah, you should have played the lottery that day«, Carsten says.
They stand for a moment looking out over the water, talking about the currents and Wilfred’s struggle in the sea.
»The water really has some punch out there«, Carsten says.
Wilfred talks about the injuries he sustained in the fall. And Carsten points out the spot where he pulled Wilfred up.
»Were you waiting for someone to see you jump?«, Carsten asks.
»No, I actually hoped no one would see me«, Wilfred says.
He has worried about how the experience affected the brothers. They were, in fact, offered counseling, but they declined.
»I’m a farmhand. I don’t go to see a psychologist. I go to see cows«, Carsten says.
A short while later, the older brother, Claus, comes motoring in on the cattle ferry ’Yrsa’. He pulls alongside and jumps ashore. Mussel shells crunch on the pier’s concrete under his wooden clogs as he takes a few steps forward and offers Wilfred a firm, sun-browned fist.
Today, Wilfred lives in a suburb of Aarhus with his girlfriend, Maja, and their dogs, Skipper and Kodi. Maja is one of the main reasons he is doing so well now, he says. She got him to stop his addiction.
When he looks at photos of himself from the period after the suicide attempt, he looks very different from the way he does today. The young man in the pictures has dark, swollen eyes. His gaze is distant. His cheeks are round. He was on far more medication then. A year ago, Wilfred found that, at last, there was a doctor who listened to him. Together they decided to scale back much of his medication. Today, Wilfred is on the lowest dose he has had in his adult life. But he is properly medicated.
»If everyone got the right help, no one would want to kill themselves«, he says.
And he has a mantra — a sentence he repeats to himself when he struggles to pull himself together for ordinary, everyday tasks. It goes: ’One, two, three – jump’.
»It’s like an on switch inside me. I think that if I can jump off a bridge, I can also do the dishes or go for a run«.
Wilfred is on early retirement pension and is a writer. He has written thousands of poems, is working on a memoir, and dreams of giving talks about mental illness and his own story. Last year, he published the poetry collection ’Willificeret’ with the publisher Mellemgaard.
Each year when he walks out onto the bridge, he looks down at the water and revisits the thoughts from that day when he wanted out of life.
»I use it in a positive way, to think about why I did what I did«, he says.
Wilfred is not cured. He will be mentally ill for the rest of his life, he has to take his medication, and every day he has to keep himself in check. Not relapse. Not give up. It can be exhausting.
»But I’m better than I’ve ever been«, he says. It’s also what he tells Carsten and Claus as he says goodbye to them.
»Take care of yourself. And don’t pull stunts like that again«, Carsten says.
As the ’Yrsa’ heads out again, Wilfred waves and keeps his eyes on the boat until it becomes a tiny speck on the water. It was difficult, but good, to meet Carsten and Claus.
»It was good to look them in the eye again. They gave me my life. And my way of giving something back was to tell them that I’m doing well. I feel a new chapter opening in my life«
He often thinks about how easily it could have ended differently — that it was sheer coincidence that Carsten and Claus came sailing by that day at that exact moment.
»I’ve never been a religious person, but I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning to that boat coming by. Someone was holding a hand over me, protecting me«.
Someone who reached down and pulled him up.
Editorial team
Text: Line Vaaben
Drawing: Roald Als
Photo: Vikki Søholm
Video: Lærke Berg-Pedersen
Digital arrangement: Hege Børrud Huseby og Kira Bube
Project leader: Laura Aller Jónasdóttir
In the editorial team: Mads Djervig, Kristian Jensen og Karina Kofoed
Editor: Peter Schøler
Chief of editorial innovation: Johannes Skov Andersen