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A NEW STUDY from the US has found that half of suicidal teenagers who watched the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why said the show contributed to their risk of dying by suicide, and researchers in Ireland say that there are concerns the show could lead to “copycat cases”.
The popular drama generated controversy for its depiction of suicide, as it centres around a 17-year-old student, who before her death, records cassettes detailing 13 reasons behind her suicide.
Strict guidelines are in place for the media reporting of suicide, for example, and concerns were raised in how the show depicted suicide on screen and the effect it would have on those watching it.
Professor Ella Arensman, from the National Suicide Research Foundation at University College Cork, told TheJournal.ie that research is currently under way to gauge the effect the show may have had on young people in Ireland.
“It’s difficult to say at the present [what effect it's had here],” she said. “We’re very involved with the International Association for Suicide Prevention. Last year, in many countries, there were specific copycat cases [...] where for the parents it was clear that in the hours or days before an act of suicide took place, they’d watched the Netflix series.”
Netflix has said that 13 Reasons Why has featured among the shows that Irish audiences have “binged” on the most since its release.
The study
The new study published in the journal Psychiatric Services from researchers at the University of Michigan asked teenagers who were suicidal if the show had contributed to suicide-related symptoms.
The study arose because anecdotal evidence among practitioners said that they were hearing more teens being treated for suicidal symptoms talking about 13 Reasons Why.
Of the 87 youths who participated, 43 had watched it. And among the 43, 21 of those said it heightened their suicide risk.
“Our study doesn’t confirm that the show is increasing suicide risk, but it confirms that we should definitely be concerned about its impact on impressionable and vulnerable youth,” the study’s lead author Victor Hong said.
Few believe this type of media exposure will take kids who are not depressed and make them suicidal. The concern is about how this may negatively impact youth who are already teetering on the edge.
Irish context
The show is also available to anyone in Ireland with a Netflix subscription, and Aíne O’Meara from Headline – a national programme for responsible reporting of mental health and suicide – said the show has had an impact here too.
She told TheJournal.ie that there was a noticeable increase in teen suicide content in Irish media around the most recent release of the second series of 13 Reasons Why.
“This increase was a combination of entertainment reviews of the actual series, news items on teen suicides, and broader discussion of teen suicide in relation to bullying and rape culture,” she said.
Professor Arensman said that – when she first saw the series – her immediate reaction was “are we going back in time?”
She recalled a similar film that was shown in Germany in the 1980s that contained graphic details about a young man who took his life. Following that, there was a sharp increase in the number of suicides in young men.
“It is cases like this that supported the World Health Organisation putting in place guidelines for media reporting of suicide,” she said. “Not to do it in a sensationalised way. Everything that was evidence-based in the guidelines is undone by the Netflix series.”
O’Meara did highlight that discussions around the second series was more considered than the first, because of a toolkit released by Netflix themselves ahead of its release which provided talking points for parents, community organisations and schools concerned about their teens watching the show.
She added: “We find the difficulty when you get a suicide theme in a fictional setting, like 13RW or say for example Aidan Connors death in Coronation Street earlier this year, is you have entertainment and arts writers who are not as well versed on the guidelines for reporting on/covering suicide, whether that’s factual or fictional, discussing things like suicide methodology in great detail.
News reporters don’t do that anymore and for a very good reason. The risk of copycatting is just too high. Whether a suicide is factual or fictional, any graphic or visual representation of a suicide method is going to be problematic for vulnerable audiences.
Media reporting guidelines around suicide include exercising caution when referring to the methods and context of a suicide, steering away from melodramatic depictions of suicide or its aftermath and aiming for non-sensensationalising, sensitive coverage.
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The bars should give them out free at the door
great idea well done
Just make glasses that go a different colour when spiked.
I worked as a doorman for 15 years, when ever I saw a girl who was leaving with just one bloke and looked like she needed help walking or was just a little too dependant him,
I always stopped them and asked a few questions, like did he know her name, where she lived etc and found out pretty quickly if he knew her or was chancing his arm. Any decent boyfriend might get annoyed at first but when you explain its his girlfriends safety your interest in they calmed down.
If he didn’t know her I held her and looked for her friends and told him to sling his hook. Sometimes I’d call mam or dad if I couldn’t find friends and thought she needed protection.
Chris , fair play to you , you sound like a decent kind of guy .
There should be more door men like you around. But the question is would someone do the same for a young man in a gay bar or would he say well he cam look after himself. When do we stop treating young women like little girls and teach them to have responsibility and try not get into that situation? Not become victims?
Great idea- however I saw an expose a few years ago on the alleged use of date rape drugs that talked to many rape specialists dealing with rape in the health service and they found there was little or no evidence to show such drugs were being used and if they were they were extremely rare! They found the biggest contributor to date rape was alcohol! Many girls were claiming to have had their drinks spiked but when analysed it was found that the alcohol levels in the blood were extremely high while no trace of date rape drugs were found!! Alcohol is the most dangerous drug! If however this testing kit saves 1 girl in the next 10yrs it’s worth it!!!
I made the same point and got red thumbs
How about teaching boys/men that it’s not ok to rape drunk women/girls and vice versa.
Teaching men…
You mean like that seminar on feminist rape culture rubbish they tried to make it mandatory for all men entering Trinity and UCD to attend before it turned out that all the sexual assaults they were saying it was needed to prevent were completely fictitious…
That’s a good idea however in alot of cases its the amount that is drank. No spiking needed when you drink a naggen of vod before you go out.
So how much are women allowed to drink to be raped?
Deborah – please stop with the idiotic comments. This is meant to help the situation but you keep sh!tting on everyone. Stop.
I am not just referring to women here guys go out all the time and can’t remember a thing they might get mugged or bet up and they don’t remember. I am however saying that both woman and men in Ireland don’t need to be spiked to be taken advantage of due to level of alcohol consumed. You must take personnel responsibility for yourself also. There are bad people out there that will take advantage of any situation where people are intoxicated. It is well known that in alot date rape cases the amount of drink taken is the drug in question. But you go bury your head in the sand that will solve nothing.
Can’t see this working. How many times a night should you be checking your drink. In the surface it sounds like a nice idea but I can see it actually working
People already make an effort to mind their drinks. This will make them feel safer.
One point that unsurprisingly wasn’t mentioned is that men’s drinks get spiked as well , there are some evil idiots out there.
Well now there’s something for you to use. It’s even blue with a little man on it so it won’t be emasculating to buy it.
Men worldwide get drugged by criminals, including women who want to rob them. That’s somehow a joke to you Daisy?? Shame on you.
You think people who are dopey enough to leave their drink unattended, are going to be vigilant enough to test it when they get back to it?
I had something put in a bottle a few years back. I was fecked for about 3 days after it , could hardly move.
And Jason sometimes in clubs one person is left to mind the drinks but they don’t pay attention, that’s what happened in my case.
Had it happen as well and not in some crowded club either but in my local at four on a Sunday afternoon. If it weren’t for a few friends seeing me falling down the street and knowing it was out of character for me I’d have been in some trouble. Apparently there was some gang doing the rounds using roofies to rob people.
Imagine living in this odd kind of utopia where you can leave a drink unattended without it being interfered with.
Daisy – unfortunately that’s not the world we live in. You can say we should be able to do a number of things without worry, but that’s not helping anything because it’s not dealing with reality.
Are there any actual facts on the prevalence of spiking? I get the feeling it’s very rare and that people are just drinking too much
Sad that it has come to this, sad that we can’t we teach people not to put drugs into other people’s drinks without their consent in the first place
I think the sickos who do this can’t be taught right from wrong sadly.
Wow, Emma. No one else ever thought of that! Any more gems of wisdom? Like a solution to cars being stolen?
Mr. Hoffman You are aware of how obnoxious you’re coming across right?
If they make people feel more secure, then so be it. This may have its uses, and not just in a rape context. Spiking drinks with e tabs, groups of mates spiking another guys drink for a laugh that is, used to be fairly common back in the 90′s.
Seems to me to be more practical than these ‘rape alarms’ handed out years back. They achieved little other than feed into rape hysteria and if anything had the opposite affect.
I wouldn’t say that it’s more practical- just that they can both be useful in different contexts. A piece of colour changing paper isn’t going to a fat lot of good if someone pulls you into a dark alleyway as you’re walking home, and a rape alarm won’t be much use to you if you’re barely conscious and finding it hard to even move because someone slipped something in your drink.
My university gave out rape alarms in the freshers packs.
Students soon figured out that once you pulled the tab out and tossed them into a student residence letterbox at 3am the only physical way to stop them shrieking was to smash them to pieces.
This just seems entirely impractical. Are you really going to be playing the scientist after every time you look away from your drink when you’ve already had a few? If you’re that worried about it maybe you should put your drink in a hip flask with a screw top and carry it everywhere like Mad-eye Moody.
They would be handy for people who smoke and have to leave their drinks inside.
Any one got any stats on how much of a problem this is? Sounds like hysteria to me
This will be seen as a good idea but it isn’t really a danger to begin with. The rape crisis centre came out and have said there has not been one case in Ireland of a date rape drug found in Ireland. I know people will start going on about a friend or the time they suddenly felt drunken than they should be. I’ll believe the rape crisis centre on this
Most people’s drinks are “spiked” with alcohol. It’s unfortunate that one can’t get occasionally shitfaced without some opportunist, predator thinking you’re an ideal person to have sex with. What kind of sad individual singles out the drunkest person in the room and thinks an orgasm with them would be nice?
So you agree the test is pointless as it won’t detect alcohol?
Great… American style paranoia.
And what if your drink is proven to be spiked, do you get a free one?
Idiotic.. It’s like parking your car walking around the corner to check if theres anything coming the going back to the car.Out of 10s of millions of drinks served every year how many are spiked? It’s not practicable or viable
It would be better if they made the date rape drug so that it turns your drink a different colour
Fantastic idea, I can really see the loud boorish pissed up girls of Dublin checking their fat frogs every time they come staggering back from the jacks with their shoes under their arm
BIZARRE ..based on a 1.5 euro test strip somebody decides to TRUST her drink….her company. .and her environment. BIZARRE
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