‘13 Reasons Why’ Is A Reckless, Troubling Depiction of Suicide

13 Reasons Why, Netflix‘s original series that revolves around a teenage girl named Hannah who commits suicide after a series of terrible things happen to her, probably had the best intentions at heart. The show’s head-on tackling of heavy subject matter – suicide, sexual assault, bullying – has certainly made waves and gained praise for bringing awareness to these issues, but lately, it’s become more apparent that the manner in which the show portrays these topics is dangerous. This isn’t really all that big of a surprise; the premise of 13 Reasons Why was problematic from the beginning.

In the series, protagonist Hannah leaves each of the 13 individuals who seemingly contributed to her decision to kill herself a cassette tape, and these tapes are used to retell the events leading up to her death. “Welcome to your tape” is the uniform way Hannah introduces each tape, and this has quickly spread throughout the internet as a meme. Even Netflix, home of the series, utilized the joke on their own Twitter account when Hulu made an innocuous jab about their content. If you’re going to have a suicidal character make tapes for all of the people who contributed to her decision, it seems wiser to stay on-brand than to jump on social media and trivialize suicide.

Regardless of the social media snafu, the series itself does initially set out to spread an important message. The idea that you never know how much your words affect someone and that you should be kind is a good one, but within the context of the show it is damaging. The entire premise for the show rests on the idea that Hannah is making the people around her liable for her suicide. It also implies that you can save people with kindness, which is an unfortunate fallacy. If someone doesn’t want to live, they generally need professional help. Other teenagers can’t be tasked with preventing the suicide of a peer. They should certainly not bully or assault their fellow students, but they cannot be held responsible for her self harm. Survivor’s guilt is a very real phenomenon felt by the peers of a person who commits suicide, and instead of tackling the devastating aftermath that inevitably sweeps people affected by suicide, the show demonizes almost everyone who knew Hannah. It blames them for her death: “Well, we all killed Hannah Baker.”

The regrettable and detrimental truth about 13 Reasons Why is that is allows Hannah to gain power through her suicide. This is an incredibly dangerous message; at its core, the series is a suicide revenge fantasy. It glamorizes the act of killing oneself. It reinforces the beliefs held by vulnerable individuals that suicide will allow them to have all the control they never had while alive, that it will cause the individuals who hurt them to feel guilty and ruin their lives as well. It implies that after death, she receives everything she always wanted: attention, sympathy, love. Suicide solves all her problems. The irreversible nature of death is never fully realized in the series, and for a show whose target audience is largely the fragile population it discusses, this is toxic.

The series fully engages in a romanticization of a very real, very tragic epidemic, and also omits a crucial component of the nature of suicide: mental illness. Studies have shown that 90% of individuals who kill themselves suffer from mental illness, and while the show briefly depicts Hannah visiting a counselor to discuss her sexual assault, it almost never discusses mental health issues. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and tendencies to self harm are all experienced by Hannah in the aftermath of her assault and by several other characters on the show, but there’s hardly ever a moment where the show effectively characterizes both the struggle and the notion that recovery is entirely possible by seeking professional help, or even by consulting a trusted adult. 13 Reasons Why only confirms the fears of impressionable youth that there is no way out but death, and that adults will merely trivialize your issues and misunderstand your struggles. This is a catastrophic implication; if teens think that there’s no help available to them, how are they ever going to believe that things can get better for them?

To top things off, the series ends with what is a particularly heinous suicide tutorial. It cannot be referred to as a depiction or a powerful scene, because Hannah’s suicide is an unnecessarily graphic, bloody spectacle that is utilized for shock value. We spend thirteen episodes attempting to navigate the hellscape that was young Hannah’s high school days, and the series salaciously concludes with a gratuitous, sensationalized how-to for ending one’s life. This is not progressive or compelling. It’s needless and pernicious, and it puts the most susceptible members of its audience at risk. It doesn’t matter if there’s a “trigger warning” issued at the beginning of the most harmful episodes. The content is still there, and it’s still (unfortunately) influential, and in the end, any redeeming aspect of the story is undermined by this reckless showcase.

13 Reasons Why may certainly open up doors to discuss these heavy, important issues, but its message, and subsequent effect on the most vulnerable members of its target audience, is not a safe one. While the series was initially lauded as “daring” and “important” for bringing this subject matter to the forefront, mental health organizations around the world have now issued warnings about the show’s implications and its vexing misrepresentation of suicide and mental health issues. Conversations about suicide are tough enough as it is – the last thing we need is a television series that presents it as a romantic exit strategy.