Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why remains a woeful depiction of mental health issues, whatever the suicide stats say

Netflix’s controversial teen drama series 13 Reasons Why had us worried from the moment it hit our screens two years ago. Beyond the usual ingredients for a successful teenage drama – crushes, insanely attractive twentysomethings doing their best impressions of angst-riddled teens, cartoonishly hostile “it” girls and jocks – the 13-episode drama had something more sinister at its core: a suicide mystery.

But our anxieties are more complex than an inherent distaste for dark shows aimed at young people. For those unfamiliar with the series, 13 Reasons Why – a TV adaptation of Jay Asher’s YA novel of the same name – follows protagonist Hannah Baker’s death by suicide, which she explains over a series of 13 tapes. She cites the behaviour of some of her peers towards her as part of her decision to die.

From then on, characters wrestle with their potential role in her death, reinforcing the notion that suicide is a means to take revenge on those who have wronged you. And that’s just one of the issues with the show.

Soon after it premiered, reports surfaced that Google searches related to suicide had risen by 20 per cent. By April 2017, a month after its premiere, a whopping 11 million tweets mentioning the show were circulating. Then the mental health experts spoke up.

Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation reported “a growing number of calls and emails directly related to the programme”. In America, Dan Reidenberg, executive director of suicide prevention nonprofit Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (Save), expressed concerns that teens would “overidentify with Hannah”.

“The show actually doesn’t present a viable alternative to suicide,” Reidenberg said. “The show doesn’t talk about mental illness or depression, doesn’t name those words.”

Now, two years later, and ahead of the announcement of the third series of the show, the same worries have sprung up again.

This week, a study has suggested a strong link between the show and a rise in suicides among teenagers. According to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital research, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, rates of suicide among young boys aged 10-17 in the US rose by 28.9 per cent a month after the premiere of the show.

The rate of suicide that month was said to have been “higher than in the previous 19 years”, although the number of girls affected did not change.

There are more statistics like this, some of which work in the study’s favour, others that don’t. Some of the associations between suicide rates and the timing of the show’s release might seem intimately connected, but there is no way of proving that that is actually the case. What we have here is a potential coincidence which serves to bolster entirely justifiable fears.

Netflix has responded by highlighting other research that the “show appeared to have a beneficial effect on students who saw the full second season”. It also suggests that viewers who stuck with the entire second season “were more likely to express interest in helping a suicidal person, especially compared with those who stopped watching”. Even that study, though, uncovered some harmful effects, including that viewers who stopped watching the second season before the end reported greater risk for future suicide.

I think we were right to be concerned when the Netflix hit appeared on the scene, and again when it was renewed for a second season, and now a third. It is telling that Netflix itself was forced to include additional warnings in response to these widespread fears, and the show’s creators have had to explain them on numerous occasions.

But when we fall into the trap of blindly latching on to statistics based on our desire to make the puzzle pieces of this show’s impact on teenage mental health fit, we risk distracting from those valid concerns.

The show, based on its premise alone, is deeply flawed. Not because there’s no place on our screens for exploring the complexities surrounding suicide and mental health, but because the show’s approach has entirely failed to do that in the first place.

Arguably, 13 Reasons Why romanticises suicide. At the end of the first season, it graphically depicted Hannah’s death, simplifying the myriad factors that lead to it in the first place. That remains the case, whatever the statistics might suggest. There is little point allowing research that is necessarily flawed decide how we respond to a programme, even if it fits our personal views.

Ultimately, it’s a good thing that our unrelenting scrutiny has produced a robust response to the ways in which entertainment treats suicide. Toolkits designed to help viewers of the show have been developed as a result. Netflix has launched a 13reasonswhy.info website complete with resources and discussion topics directly related to the show following the backlash.

Should we be waiting for shows that struggle to understand mental health to spark these efforts? Of course not. But nor should we naively jump on figures that don’t quite tell the full story.

If you have been affected by the issues in this article, you can contact the following organisations for support:

mind.org.uk

mentalhealth.org.uk

samaritans.org

nhs.uk/livewell/mentalhealth