A Bay Area guidance counselor was recently talking with a student suffering from crippling depression. Unable to cope with school, the girl had been staying home watching TV and devouring social media.
The counselor asked her if she had heard about the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why,” about a teenager named Hannah who chronicles herdownward spiral before takingher own life.
The student looked up at the counselor and tearfully replied, “I am Hannah.”
In the past several weeks, the wildly popular series has alarmed parents, captivated teens and sent suicide crisis centers into overdrive. Critics fear the series is going to cause depressed and vulnerable kids to act on their suicidal thoughts,but othersbelieve the show is doing a lot of good by busting open a dialogue on still-taboo subjects.
For his part, the counselor made sure the teen got the proper psychological evaluation and attention. And upon reflection, his startling conversation with the student also made him realize the power of the 13-episode series.
“I feel as though there are Hannahs at every high school. Every single one,” he said. “These stories are real.”
Like many teens, the counselor binge-watched the series, which Netflix has flagged for mature audiences only. It deals with the complex issues facing today’s teens, including bullying, binge drinking, peer pressure, public shaming and sexual assault.
“It just sucked me in,” said the counselor, who asked not to be identified to protect the student’s confidentiality.
As it did Harlie Brewer, a 13-year-old at Thornton Junior High School in Fremont. “I liked it a lot,” she said. “It was dramatic.”
As Harlie spoke to a reporter last week, parents were wrapping up a meeting that the school’s guidance counselors had arranged with Crisis Support Services of Alameda County in the wake of the show’s March 31 release. The parents peppered Matt Podkomorski, a marriage and family therapist in Alameda, with questions.
How do you tell the difference between teen angst and real depression? How do you get through to a kid whose answer to everything is a curt “Awesome”? How do you spot depression in the first place?
Unfailingly affable and at ease talking about an issue that had parents fidgeting in their seats, Podkomorski replied: “We’re looking for substantial changes” in behavior.
Sheryl Ashford’s twin 13-year-old daughters asked to watch the show after hearing about it from friends. So she and her husband agreed to watch the first eight episodes with their girls and talk about them. “It was so good to start talking about the issues,” she said.
The conversation wasn’t always comfortable, and she decided the last five episodes were too graphic for her girls to see, so she watched them alone and relayed what happened to the twins. “I wanted them to know they can come talk to us and that ‘Nothing you can do will make us ever stop loving you,’” Ashford said.
Thornton Junior High is hardly alone in looking for ways to help families navigate conversations about the show. Across the Bay Area, schools are warning parents about the show in emails and distributing guidelines from mental health professionals explaining how to talk to children about suicide.
For some kids, said Susan Flatmo, coordinator of clinical services in the Mountain View-Los Altos High School district, “watching the series is like having a scab torn off — and then needing somebody to talk to about that.”
Many suicide prevention specialists are concerned the show oversimplifies and glorifies suicide and could lead to copycat behavior.
“I think everyone is looking for heroes and romantic story lines,” said Evelyn Tirumalai, suicide prevention coordinator for Santa Clara County. “And although that is what it delivers, it just really completely misses the point of what suicide is.”
Her team is especially concerned that the series doesn’t directly address the ways teens can cope with mental illness. “Our youth need to know that treatment works,” Tirumalai said.
After declining in the 1980s and ’90s, America’s suicide rate began to increase, particularly among young girls. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for girls between the ages of 10 and 14 more than tripled from the late ’90s to 2014. The suicide rate for that age group overall doubled in the U.S. from 2007 to 2014, and it has increased for older teens since the ’90s.
Los Gatos-based Netflix did not respond to numerous requests to comment for this story. But last week the company said it would add a viewer warning card before the first episode and beef up existing warnings on graphic episodes after fielding concerns “from those who feel the series should carry additional advisories.”
Middle schoolers, especially, “can’t really understand a lot of the more mature topics the series covers — and for the most part they’re watching it alone,” Tirumalai said.
Others, however, believe the show has shed needed light on both suicide and mental illness.
“It names something that often goes unsayable,” said Jen Leland, director of Trauma Transformed, a Bay Area group that trains professionals who deal with traumatized people. “It reveals this tension of, oh my God, if we talk about it, will it happen more? But if we don’t talk about it, it reinforces the cloud of secrecy and shame — and undermines our ability to help folks heal from trauma.”
But not all families are prepared to discuss the show, which has left some kids struggling to process it on their own.
“The parents don’t know what the kids are watching,” said Graham Wiseman, a member of the Mental Health Task Force in the Acalanes Union High School District in Contra Costa County. His 15-year-old son, Colin, killed himself in 2013.
Wiseman now spends his days talking to parents and kids about suicide prevention. A couple of weeks ago, people started asking him about “13 Reasons Why.”
At a recent visit to San Ramon’s California High School, Wiseman did his best to drive home that the show’s story line is fiction — enhanced for dramatic effect.
“You don’t get a voice from beyond the grave,” he told students, referring to the fact that the series’ main character leaves behind cassette tapes detailing the reasons she killed herself.
But that message doesn’t always get through. When asked whether the show seemed real, Jordan Esperanza, a 13-year-old student at Thornton Junior High, replied, “Honestly? It kinda does.”
Wiseman’s daughter Nicole, a senior at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, watched the show after reading about it online. “I wanted to see what it was about,” she said, “and if I’d like it or find it upsetting.” While 18-year-old Nicole “really enjoyed” the series, she worries a little about someone vulnerable watching the show.
Shashank Joshi, an associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford, agrees that any teen at risk for suicide or who has been a victim of sexual assault should not watch the show because it could be extremely upsetting or even trigger suicidal behavior.
“I didn’t think it was too upsetting, but I’m a strong person and I was prepared,” Nicole Wiseman said. Still, she found a graphic scene of a young woman cutting her wrists “unnecessary.”
Helen Hsu, a clinical psychologist in Fremont who was a consultant on some of the script, said the graphic portions of the series are an attempt to show that suicide isn’t glamorous or romantic.
To avoid showing how Hannah killed herself would be “mysterious or coy,” she said. And while she’s received some flak from upset parents and other mental health professionals, she’s heard from parents who said the show prompted badly needed conversations with their kids.
“To me,” she said, “that’s kind of the aim.”
HOW TO GET HELP AND INTERVENE
If you are a child or teenager in danger of harming yourself, here are some steps mental health experts recommend you take:
If you are in immediate danger, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.
Inform a parent or another trusted adult.
Call one of the following numbers:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 or text START to 741 741
Santa Clara County Child and Adolescent Mobile Crisis Program: 877-41-CRISIS
San Mateo County Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Center: 650-579-0350
Alameda County Crisis Support Services: 800-309-2131
Contra Costa County Crisis Center: 800-273-TALK
California Youth Crisis Line: 800-843-5200
If you are an adult who thinks a child or teen in your life is contemplating self harm, here are some tips from suicide prevention experts:
Ask direct questions such as: “You’ve seemed upset lately. Have you ever had thoughts of killing yourself?” It is a myth that asking about suicide could exacerbate someone’s chances of taking action.
Phrases like “Thank you so much for telling me this” can be helpful in indicating that you are a caring, listening adult.
Seek help from one of the resources above if you need to. It is OK not to know how to respond.
