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Waves crash against rocks at Fort Point in San Francisco near the Golden Gate Bridge Oct. 10, 2008

On Wednesday, May 25, at 8:05 p.m. Barbara Sue Beaver stood on the Golden Gate Bridge and used her cellphone to email Denis Morella, her Oakland neighbor and best friend.

“Can you come and check on Jondi for me?” she wrote, referring to her affectionate pit bull.

Then, at 8:07 p.m., Beaver, 55, jumped off the bridge to her death.

“I’m just too lazy to navigate further,” said a letter found at her home, which had been left tidy and mostly emptied of belongings. Notes detailed how she had settled her affairs.

“She didn’t want her death to be a burden to anyone,” Morella said.

Beaver’s passing is part of a grim trend: suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge this year are on the rise — a pace approaching records. The economic downturn, some experts say, could be a factor.

At least 24 suicides have occurred since January, compared with 25 in 2010; recent annual rates have averaged about 27. (The record is 40 in 1977, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.)

Caltrain, the commuter rail service between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, has also seen a spike in suicides and also appears to be headed toward a record this year.

There have been 12 deaths on Caltrain tracks so far in 2011. Most remain under investigation, but four have been determined to be suicides. In 2010 there were 11 Caltrain fatalities, all suicides. The record for suicides is 15 in 2009. In recent years, most track deaths were eventually found to be suicides.

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Theories abound regarding the cause behind this year’s surge, but full explanations perish with victims.

Experts have long debated whether the Werther effect — the theory that a highly publicized suicide can inspire copycat suicides — has played a role in past spikes, like the increases in suicides from the bridge in 2007 and on Caltrain tracks in 2009.

But there has been no significant news media coverage so far in 2011, and officials for both the Golden Gate Bridge and Caltrain said it was unlikely that this year’s increase was the result of copycats.

Instead, some experts are pointing to economic despair.

“We have noticed many more people mentioning the economy,” said Eve Meyer, executive director of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, a nonprofit group that operates the city’s suicide hot line.

“We constantly hear, ‘I’m going to be homeless; I would rather be dead than be homeless,’” Meyer said.

Studies have shown that suicide rates tend to increase about 18 months after an economic decline. “Benefits run out and the crises begin to multiply,” she said.

In California, roughly 497,000 people have been jobless for so long that they have exhausted 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, according to data released last week.