13 Reasons Why
Kashika Gokhale
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Warning: This article contains certain spoilers regarding the show 13 Reasons Why
13 Reasons why revolves around an unhappy teenager who tries dealing with daily hassles and traumas in her life. When I first studied psychology in school, our textbook mentioned how daily hassles can cause extreme stress which may lead to a tipping point most of the class what this could be. What many of us didn’t realize at the time was that several studies have shown an association between school, bullying, depression, and suicidality among teens. Unfortunately, bullying and depression are not isolated events but something that is extremely in common for most teens to experience these days.
The series tells the story of Hannah Baker, who commits suicide before the series opens. She then sent out audio tapes providing 13 reasons of why she did it and the people responsible for her wanting to take her life. These reasons include rape, bullying, exclusion, lack of social support, slut-shaming, and bystanders who fail to intervene and help her when she needed them.
We are taken on a whirlwind of events as Clay, the protagonist, as he follows Hannah’s orders and listens to the tapes. When the tape comes to Clay, Hannah apologizes for including him because he does not deserve to be on the list. She says he is the nicest person she has met and she says she wishes she had more time to know him. However, in real life, we are faced with the mental trauma that Clay goes through while listening to the tapes. The stress of listening to the tapes is causing Clay’s ‘what if’ daydreaming to become actual hallucinations and upon learning how he contributed to Hannah’s suicide, he concocts an alternative version of events in which she didn’t die and they happily began dating. However, the implication of grief causing illusions or hallucination of a loved one is not something that has been looked into in depth. This is also one of the reasons why the show was heavily criticized. The show first aired without a trigger warning and was uncomfortable to watch by people who had no previous history of depression and suicidal thoughts.
Another big part of the show focuses on rape and what kind of effects it can have on your mental health. Hannah encounters rape twice in the TV series. The first time, she was hiding in a cupboard and is forced to watch as her best friend is raped. The second time, she is raped. There is a moment in the show when Hannah and Clay kiss at a party. It is very clear that he is not taking advantage of her and that she wants to be there. However, Hannah starts experiencing flashbacks and she starts yelling at Clay, thinking that he is one of the people who keep harming her. Hannah is trying to fight for control of her body, but her mind is still trying to grapple with what happened then and what’s happening now. She fits all but one criteria for PTSD. This includes experiencing and witnessing, an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. The person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in the form of Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes)
The last tape is for Mr. Porter, a temporary school counselor that told Hannah that if she was unwilling to press charges against "the boy" that raped her, then she should try to move on, even after Hannah expressed a desire to kill herself. The school counselor or psychologists can play an important role in situations like these. If Mr. Porter had tried to help her instead of trying to blame the alcohol she had drank or repeatedly question her about whether she had said “no” maybe he would be able to stop her from committing suicide.
The show does a good job at offering a perspective of what circumstances might lead an individual to consider suicide. The sad reality is that suicide is currently the 2nd leading cause of teen and young adult death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in individuals between the ages of 10 and 24 years old, suicide is the third leading cause of death. It is true that not all suicide is preventable and not all symptoms are obvious. However, I think that the show allows the viewer to observe situations which are likely to cause teens and young adults to consider suicide, such as sexual assault, rumors, exclusion, etc.
Works Cited
Ellis, Amy E. “What A Clinical Psychologist Thinks Of '13 Reasons Why'.” Medium, Augmenting Humanity, 11 May 2017, medium.com/thrive-global/what-a-clinical-psychologist-thinks-of-13-reasons-why-c20df55e8505.
“The Importance of '13 Reasons Why' and It's Reflection of Teen Mental Health.” Psych Central, 13 Apr. 2017, psychcentral.com/blog/the-importance-of-13-reasons-why-and-its-reflection-of-teen-mental-health/.
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