Five weeks ago, the LHS Director of School Counseling, Ms. O’Dea sent an email addressed to parents and guardians, and then forwarded that same email to teachers, detailing problems she had heard about (from a counseling email blast) in the popular Netflix series, “13 Reasons Why.” The email offered resources for struggling students as well as suggested discussion questions between students and parents about the series and about mental health topics in general.

Both before and after the series was released, schools in the area also sent out emails to parents, and several national and local publications, including the Union Leader, published articles discussing suicide prevention.

To start, we found the media frenzy odd. Suicide isn’t a new issue and while the show is newly popular, the issues brought up aren’t new, and neither is the plot. (The novel which the show was based off of came out in 2007).

On top of this, we found that this was a strange time for an email from a member of administration. There are plenty of other shows which have touched upon teenage suicide, depression, and anxiety. We even read books in school which touch on these topics, from “Romeo and Juliet” in freshman English (the ultimate romanticized suicide) to “Dead Poets Society” as a junior.

And why weren’t we warned about shows like “Cyberbully” (2011) on ABC Family, or “The Fosters” (2015) on Freeform, which both showed an attempted suicide? What about “A Girl Like Her” (2015) on Netflix, which centered entirely around the aftermath of an attempted suicide?

While it is true that some other shows that mention suicide don’t focus solely on it in the way “13 Reasons Why” does, they still delve into the topic and bring up the same questions about how to handle mental illness. Most shows popular with teenagers on TV or Netflix grapple with difficult topics like suicide, LGTBQ+ rights, rape, drugs or alcohol, but no show before “13 Reasons Why” has warranted an email home to parents.

In a recent interview with O’Dea, she said that is because this show is on Netflix and not on regular TV, so she believes parents may be unaware of what shows their children are watching.

“Parents have more of an avenue to see what’s on a TV than they do on Netflix,” O’Dea said. “Mental illness is an area that is the elephant in the room. People don’t necessarily talk about it. Mental illness is definitely something that impacts so many people and just being able to reach out to somebody and say ‘are you okay?’ can make a world of difference.”

O’Dea also said that she believes the show is hitting a younger audience, and that suicide is a bigger issue than rape or bullying, so shows which grapple with only those topics don’t get the same treatment.

“The unfortunate aspect of suicide is that someone is dead,” O’Dea said. “Someone has killed themselves. There is a loss that can never come back. With the transgender, with rape, with a lot of other issues, that’s not necessarily the case.”

However, don’t issues like bullying, LGBTQ+ rights and rape often contribute to suicide? That is certainly true in “13 Reasons Why,” where Hannah is bullied and raped—her rape being the final straw that drives her to kill herself.

We understand that there were good intentions behind sending an email informing parents of the controversial show. That being said, we found that the email O’Dea sent to LHS parents and staff was poorly crafted, and at the very least, careless. Especially considering that O’Dea has never viewed the show herself.

When O’Dea was asked about watching the show, she said, “I don’t know that I want to [view the show] and my reason behind [that decision] is that as much as I want to see it and know what the hype is about, I don’t want to contribute to the hype. By being another person that views it, it shows how popular it is.”

While we understand the personal choice not to view the show, it’s still unprofessional to send an email that makes it seem like you know what you’re talking about when you don’t. We know it may not be realistic to expect her to watch the show before sending out a timely email, but at the very least she should have read the book or Sparknotes. Doing anything to become informed about the show would have given the email credibility.

Parents have a level of trust with the administration that the information being sent home has been properly vetted and accurately represents the present situation. The fact that O’Dea sent home an email warning parents about a show that she has not seen is irresponsible, especially because there are so many mixed reviews from mental health professionals.  Simply Google “13 Reasons Why,” and you can easily see the differing opinions from credible sources surrounding the show.

O’Dea said she originally heard about “13 Reasons Why” from a counseling listserv, which is an email blast list for guidance directors, principals and counselors. The listservs send information about current events that could affect students to anyone who has signed up.

“Sanborn, their principal, had sent out and put on their website [an article about] ‘13 Reasons Why,’” O’Dea said. “And right after that, NAMI (the National Alliance for Mental Illness) had sent something out, and so I kind of crafted the email from both of those [articles].”

It is understandable to gather information from outside sources before writing an email. But we think “crafted” is an odd word choice since the entirety of the email’s content was directly copied and pasted from several different sources without proper citations. The way the email was written sounded like O’Dea has come up with these opinions on her own, however, we found the different articles (including Sanborn’s newsletter) she took her information from, word for word after a simple search.

It should be noted that the newsletter from NAMI, from which large sections were directly copied, did read “Enclosed is a sample letter, which you can adapt as you wish, if you chose to use it.” However, we still find using the entirety of the ‘suggested’ letter with the additions for Sanborn, not citing it, and not using a single original idea, irresponsible. Not a single line in the entire letter was original to O’Dea or specific to LHS, and the fact that the information was from outside sources and outside opinions was never mentioned.

O’Dea said her motivations behind sending the email were to make parents aware of what students might be watching and to be able to, “open the lines of communication.”

But how can the lines of communication be opened when the email sent home was completely biased? While the email does not specifically tell students not to watch the show, it certainly was interpreted that way by students and parents. After all, perception is reality. It makes clear communication harder between students and their parents when only one side of the issue is presented.

In theory, presenting parents with information about mental health is an excellent idea, and we fully support mental health discussions and awareness. But “13 Reasons Why” has elicited very different responses from mental health professionals, parents and teenagers. To only present one side of this mental health discussion to parents, and to present that side as fact, is, at the very least, problematic.

If the email had just made parents aware of the show (and other similar shows), offered resources, and demonstrated that this is a complex topic with trained psychologists having many different opinions, we wouldn’t be writing this article. This email should have told parents that this show was out there, presented mental health resources, and been specific to Londonderry.

It was none of these things.

O’Dea said in our interview that she also sent the email because she was concerned that the fictional show was misleading and didn’t give enough information to viewers.

However, we are once again unaware of how she formed this opinion without viewing the show for herself.

“I had just come back from a mental health training the week before, and in my mind it really solidified that you can’t take a back seat to [these issues],” O’Dea said. “Mental health is something that I don’t think gets enough attention.”

We agree with O’Dea here. Mental health is something that is not discussed enough. And what is LHS doing about it?

Our current suicide prevention policy is that when a student comes forward or expresses suicidal ideation, their parents and mental health professionals are contacted. But to us, that isn’t prevention. This is a call to action for LHS to step forward and talk more about mental health, and start the process of removing the stigma surrounding these issues.

The real world isn’t rainbows and butterflies all the time, and shows popular with teenagers usually reflect that. No one is there to shelter us from real issues like suicide, bullying, drugs, or alcohol.

We understand that as seniors we are a bit more mature than freshmen just entering high school. Younger students may interpret the show differently and may not understand all the details in the show, so perhaps for parents with freshman students or for middle school parents a purely informational email would be helpful.

But as an adult ready to enter the real world, having a biased email about a Netflix show we’d already watched (about a book we read as 5th and 6th grades respectively) sent to our parents, and not to us, was condescending.

When O’Dea was asked about why the email wasn’t sent to students, she responded that it was because there is no email list to contact students.

But wouldn’t a show that is deemed important enough for an email home warrant an assembly or at the very least an announcement? Again, we can only talk from a student’s perspective, but the fact that the email went over our heads and directly to our parents made us feel out of the loop about something that is highly relevant to us. If mental health really is the “elephant in the room,” as O’Dea said in our interview, then you do more than send an email to parents about a Netflix show.

And as two 18-year-olds leaving LHS in a couple weeks, with critical thinking skills and an ability to analyze characters, the suggestion that we are unprepared to discuss topics such as depression, sexual violence, bullying, suicide or LGBTQ+ rights is insulting. It also ignores the fact that these are issues members of Lancer Nation—from freshmen to seniors—face on a regular basis in some form or another.

While resources should be directed to those struggling with mental illness, more focus should also be put on preventing bullying and making sure LHS feels safe for everyone. That was the ultimate message of “13 Reasons Why” and why it is worth a watch.

As Clay says in the final episode, “We have to do better. The way we treat each other. We have to look out for each other. It has to get better somehow.”