WVU in the News: In the Month After 13 Reasons Why Premiered, Teen Suicide Increased

From the moment it premiered in March of 2017, 13 Reasons Why stirred controversy. The series was built around a suicide, tracing the final days of a depressed teenaged girl, Hannah Baker, whose classmates spend the season trying to figure out why she killed herself. In particular, a graphic suicide scene toward the end of the show’s first season proved a flashpoint for arguments around the glamorization of teen self-harm and suicide; mental health advocates warned that such depictions often inspire copycats. Now, a new study shows that the program’s debut did correlate with a spike in teen suicides—but as with most studies of this nature, it’s hard to draw any concrete conclusions about causation.

Read more of this article from Vanity Fair