A senior mental health care worker in Hamilton has condemned the Netflix series which follows a teen girl flirting with romanticized suicide. Gord Davies, an employee of St. Joseph’s Healthcare suggests the soap opera-like series Thirteen Reasons Why has coincided with a tripling of calls about kids in jeopardy in recent weeks. He says the series romanticizes suicide and suggests nothing good can come out of it. Davies told the CBC’s Duncan McCue the series does not instill any hope in those who are hopeless. “It’s actually giving them an idea that maybe there is no hope. Maybe the things they were thinking, about trying to talk to somebody, that wouldn’t go anywhere good. That reaching out to a mental health worker, a guidance counselor, that wouldn’t actually be beneficial. And it actually seals the case in their mind that there is no hope. And that’s just a very sad thing.” Davies said “It also dramatizes suicide, saying there is something good that comes out of it, because after they’re dead people will talk about them more, they’ll think about them more. It romanticizes suicide in a way that just is not healthy.”
