Christ. Netflix‘s series ‘13 Reasons Why‘ has been widely criticised for its handling 0f suicide as a theme, in particular for a graphic 3-minute scene in which the main character Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) kills herself.
Now, researchers in the United States have found that searches around suicide jumped massively in the 19 days after the series was released in March earlier this year.
Using data from Google Trends, researchers found that searches for “suicide” increased 19% in the 19 days following the series’ release, reflecting some 900,000 to 1.5 million more searches than expected.
And while some searches were for things like suicidal hotlines and information, most were focused on suicidal ideation.
“How to commit suicide” rose 26%, “commit suicide” rose 18% and “how to kill yourself” rose 9%.
The paper, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for internal medicine, expressed concern over the increased searches around suicidal ideation.
“It is unclear whether any query preceded an actual suicide attempt,” the researchers noted. “However, suicide search trends are correlated with actual suicides, media coverage of suicides concur with increased suicide attempts, and searches for precise suicide methods increased after the series’ release.”
The paper suggests that to curtail the negative side effects, the show should follow the World Health Organisation‘s media guidelines for preventing suicide, a.k.a. by removing the scene altogether, and by including suicide hotline numbers in each episode.
“These strategies could be retrofitted to the released episodes, including in the planned second season, or applied to other programs,” it said. “Moreover, programs might undergo testing to evaluate any effect on public health outcomes before release to minimise societal harms.”
Both Canada and New Zealand implemented restrictions around the show (teens in New Zealand are technically not allowed to watch it without adult supervision).
And Selena Gomez, who executive produced the show, responded to the criticism by saying that kids deserve “real” content, and promising that Season 2 would “answer a lot of questions”.
TBH though, when it comes to matters around mental health and suicide, resolving matters at a vague time “in the future” doesn’t really cut it.
