Hey…
It’s Knowing Better.
Don’t adjust your… whatever device you’re watching this on.
It’s me, live and in stereo.
No gimmicky titles, no thirteen title cards, and this time, no guests.
Get a snack, settle in, because I’m about to tell you why this show is the worst thing
to happen to mental health awareness in recent memory.
13 Reasons Why, welcome to your tape.
This video is brought to you by Dashlane.
Thirteen Reasons Why is a teen drama on Netflix that has sparked a lot of controversy since
the first season came out last year.
It covers sex, suicide, mental health, substance abuse, you name it.
Their stated goal in the trigger warning which precedes the first episode is to-
Start a conversation.
If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that I have a deep seeded hatred
for this show and the way that it glorifies mental health issues.
And specifically suicide.
The show also gets a lot wrong about high school in general, which is weird considering
what a universal experience that is.
You’d think the producers would know what high school is like.
We could spend hours discussing plot holes, like how adults don’t seem to exist in this
universe at all.
Or how the cliques are incredibly well-defined, there are no jocks in band, there are no band
geeks in yearbook…
Think about your high school experience, was anybody just one thing?
We could also talk about silly nitpicks like how Jessica’s dad is in the Air Force, but
nobody else’s parents are – do they live 200 miles away from the nearest base or something?
How is he the only one?
Or how about the fact that Tony thinks cassette tapes are a superior medium.
You’re still on the old media, huh?
So much better.
In what universe is that true?!
You can make the case that vinyl sounds better, we could have that debate, but audio cassettes?
C’mon.
No, we’re not here to nitpick those things, I’m not a film critic.
If you are interested in sort of thing, as well as some of the more technical aspects,
I recommend this video by I Hate Everything…
I really need to figure out what’s causing that.
We’re here to talk about the broken psychology and inaccurate depictions of mental health
in the show.
We are going to- Start a conversation.
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, the basic premise is that Hannah Baker kills
herself and leaves behind several audio tapes with thirteen reasons explaining why she did
it.
The set gets passed from person to person until they reach Clay, the main protagonist
and audience surrogate.
We listen to the tapes and learn things along with him and experience the various flashbacks
just as he does.
It was actually a pretty clever narrative device to have him crash his bike in the first
episode – if he has a scar, it’s currently happening; if he doesn’t, it’s a flashback.
In the beginning of season two, Hannah reappears to Clay, not in a flashback, but in current
time.
So you talk now?
Apparently.
There are only two possible explanations for this.
A, Hannah is a ghost, in which case I have some rather strong opinions which I’ve discussed
before.
You don’t get to come back and watch your epic revenge fantasy unfold.
But since Executive Producer, Selena Gomez, described the show as “so real” we can
assume that’s not the case.
Which leaves us with option B, Clay has schizophrenia.
It’s somewhat eluded to during season one that Clay had a mental health issue that required
medication and therapy in the past, but we’re never given any context, maybe they’re leaving
that for season three.
Yes, there’s going to be a season three.
Schizophrenia usually doesn’t present itself until your early- to mid-twenties, so it’s
a little odd that he’s showing symptoms already.
There are two main symptoms of schizophrenia.
Delusions are a false belief about reality – everything from that person is a secret
robot replacement, to the government is run by reptilian shapeshifters, to all of this
is just a computer simulation.
This is just a symptom of schizophrenia, if you happen to believe any of these, that doesn’t
mean you have schizophrenia – but you might.
Clay doesn’t appear to have any delusions, but he is experiencing hallucinations, seeing
or hearing something that isn’t actually there.
Hallucinations come in many different forms and literally affect every sense.
A good example of a tactile hallucination is when you feel your phone vibrate in your
pocket but when you look- I’m actually convinced that it does vibrate because sometimes when
I look at my phone I’ll see the notification disapp- anyway.
Most hallucinations that we’re concerned with are either auditory, so you’re hearing
voices, or visual, you’re seeing things.
Clay is experiencing both, an audiovisual hallucination of a girl who isn’t really
there, which is rare, but not impossible.
The problem with this depiction is how he responds to and interacts with the hallucination.
Firstly, hallucinations are usually quick or fleeting – they appear for a moment and
then hide behind a tree or corner when you try to get a better look at them, and when
you go to investigate, they’re gone.
Secondly, they’re usually scary.
Nobody is hallucinating that they’re on a date with a supermodel or Magic Mike.
It’s usually somebody’s trying to murder you or watching you.
This is what causes idiots who are high on salvia to run into traffic or jump out of
the window of their second story apartment.
Because thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, you don’t know that you are hallucinating.
You might realize it afterwards and have a laugh while putting the video up on youtube,
you might even know that you’re going to hallucinate, which is why you set up the camera
in the first place.
But in the moment, it is real.
Your brain is telling you that what you’re seeing or hearing is actually happening.
So Clay realizing that she isn’t real and still having full conversations with her is
an inaccurate depiction of a hallucination.
Earlier in the first episode, she appears in the background or he mistakes people for
her, but she always disappears in a flash because hallucinations are fleeting.
It even gets in the way of his relationship with Skye.
What the f- At first I wanted to applaud the show for
its depiction of teenage sex… ugh it sounds creepy when I say that.
The typical Hollywood trope is that all it takes for a teenage boy is a strong breeze.
Open the window and breeze rolls in and I- But in reality, the opposite is just as common
and they go out of their way to show that.
I like the way you look, I like you.
Really?
Because your body is kinda saying the opposite.
This is Psychogenic Erectile Dysfunction, meaning it’s psychological in origin rather
than biological.
These kids are way too young to be having biological problems in that regard.
They’re way too nervous, their mind is elsewhere, they’re hallucinating.
It really does happen to a lot of guys, your girlfriend isn’t lying to you.
But then they throw it all out the window and have the creepy incel ruin his pants in
a movie theater.
What’s wrong?
Sorry!
Skye is Clay’s girlfriend in season two, at least when he’s not obsessing over Hannah,
and she’s your typical goth gf.
Skye has Bipolar Disorder.
A person without this disorder goes through normal ups and downs, but it’s much more
pronounced in a person who is bipolar.
They go from a deep depression to mania.
Most people understand what depression is, we’ve all likely experienced it at some
point.
But mania is a little more difficult to wrap your head around.
People going through a manic state feel invincible, not physically, obviously, but they feel great
and like nothing could ever ruin this.
So they engage in risky behavior, like gambling, drug use, and sex.
Now, I’m not a clinical psychologist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night,
so I was able to diagnose her with bipolar disorder during this scene…
We hang out.
What does that mean?
I never know… is that slang for sex?
Mom!
I just hope you’re being careful.
Oh c’mon, no adult in that room would not know what just happened there.
It’s later confirmed to the audience that she has that disorder while she’s at an
in-patient mental health resort.
Look are they sure it’s bipolar?
I mean it feels like kind of a blurry line between someone being manic and someone being
in a really good mood.
But I would also argue that she has Borderline Personality Disorder, which is often co-morbid
with Bipolar, meaning that they occur at the same time.
Having Borderline Personality Disorder means that those ups and downs are much more unstable
and sudden.
Skye goes from a manic episode to an incredibly depressed episode in a matter of minutes and
then goes home to self-harm.
Along with Minecraft, Skye also does Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, or NSSI.
More commonly known as cutting.
Then what’s that?
It’s what you do instead of killing yourself.
There are three main reasons why people self-harm and in order to discuss them, we need to talk
about conditioning.
I hope you paid attention during your Intro Psych class.
If you want to get someone to do something there are two ways to go about it, with a
reward or punishment.
Though in psychology, we call it reinforcement and punishment.
And then there are two types of each of these, positive and negative.
Positive and negative don’t mean good or bad in this context, it means you are getting
something or taking something away.
So a positive reinforcement is something we all understand, you’re getting something
good as a reward.
Positive punishment is also something we all understand, though the name sounds a bit contradictory.
You are getting a punishment.
A negative reinforcement is when something bad is taken away, maybe a siren turns off
when you stand in a certain place or a headache goes away after you take medication.
The behavior is reinforced by stopping a bad thing from happening.
A negative punishment on the other hand is when you take away something good.
Like being grounded or banned from a video game.
So now that we have that covered, why do people self-harm?
Positive reinforcement is unfortunately a big contributor.
Someone who is feeling neglected will self-harm and are suddenly showered with care and attention.
It’s an attention-seeking behavior in the same vein as Munchausen Syndrome.
The person obviously needs medical attention and mental health care, but that’s also
why they did it in the first place, so it’s kind of a Catch-22.
Positive punishment is somewhat more rare.
Someone will physically punish themselves for some moral failing or wrongdoing.
This is common in people who suffered abuse as a child and no longer have a parental figure
to dole out punishment, so… they do it themselves.
Skye, as far as I can tell, doesn’t fall into this category.
But negative reinforcement does seem to fit the bill.
She’s taking away the emotional pain she’s feeling and replacing it with physical pain.
As soon as she feels a depressive state coming on, she goes home and cuts herself to stop
it.
She doesn’t want to die, people who cut don’t do it with suicidal intent.
It’s the just pain that they’re after, thus the name.
Unfortunately, well over half of people who self-harm eventually attempt suicide.
So if they tell you it’s nothing to worry about, it’s not nothing.
Hannah commits suicide before the first episode, she didn’t self-harm or show symptoms of
any mental health issues before that.
But two of the thirteen causes that she lists involve sexual assault; one of them happens
to her and the other to a friend while she is hiding in a closet.
Now, I’ve heard criticisms of Hannah’s response to these assaults and, especially
in the case of her friend, felt it myself.
Why didn’t she do anything?
Whether it was trying to stop it, or screaming, or calling the cops, she could have done something,
right?
To respond to that criticism, we need to talk about your fight or flight response.
Your nervous system has multiple parts and subdivisions – it’s not just your brain.
Your brain is the Central Nervous System or CNS, but you also have a Peripheral Nervous
System, which branches off from your spinal cord and is never abbreviated.
And it can make decisions and perform actions independently from your brain.
It’s not like a separate person or anything, it’s very basic decisions.
Have you ever touched a hot stove and pulled your hand back before you even felt that it
was hot?
That’s your Peripheral Nervous System.
The Peripheral Nervous System also has two parts, the Somatic, which controls movement
and sensory input, and the Autonomic, which regulates your physiological functions.
The Autonomic Nervous System is what regulates your arousal level, through, yet again, two
systems.
The Sympathetic Nervous System ramps you up for your fight or flight response, while the
Parasympathetic calms you down for rest and digest.
So what happens when you encounter something stressful, like a lion or your friend being
assaulted?
The amygdala is activated, followed by the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands,
releasing epinephrine, also known as adrenaline – which along with raising your heart rate
and affecting your senses, also slows down your perception of time so you can react more
quickly and decide whether to run away or stand your ground.
But that doesn’t happen with Hannah does it?
Because fight or flight is an incomplete understanding of the available options.
It’s actually fight, flight, or freeze.
Which is the most common response in modern humans.
It’s the deer in headlights.
You don’t know what to do, so instead of making a decision, you do nothing.
Do Something!
Hannah doesn’t know if running away will cause more harm or if screaming and fighting
back will cause more harm.
So she freezes – whether she’s the victim or a witness.
So at least her response is consistent across both situations.
Now let’s talk about the suicide.
Is it possible we can be done with all this?
I mean it’s been over a week, isn’t healthy to like move on?
The school is right to be concerned.
Knowing someone who commits suicide increases the likelihood of friends and family to commit
suicide by 65% or more.
It’s called Suicide Contagion and it can happen in a local cluster or even nationally
when it’s someone like a celebrity.
So the school is reacting appropriately to try and get out ahead of any copycat suicides.
Which is exactly what happens anyway.
Alex attempts to kill himself by shooting himself in the head, which doesn’t work.
When, in reality, it works 97-99% of the time.
This is in contrast to Hannah, who kills herself by cutting her-
Whoa whoa, I’m not showing that scene are you crazy?!
I also disagree with the show showing that, it was pure shock value and nothing more.
Anyway, in reality, cutting your wrists only works 1.2-6% of the time.
So it’s flipped for some reason.
Not to mention the show and various other media depictions make it look like it only
takes a few seconds or minutes.
When in reality it takes 4-6 hours, if it works at all.
Your body is incredibly resilient to injuries like that, remember that scene from Saving
Private Ryan?
Whereas gunshots to the head in the show and elsewhere, sometimes don’t work.
I have my own tin foil hat theories on why the show flips the success rate, but I’ll
let you discuss that down below.
You have a cane and a scar.
Where?
Where is the scar?
I get that they might not have wanted him to have some disfiguring scar that they’d
have to apply before filming every day, but they had no problem with doing that for Clay
in the first season.
Later, they try to say that the scars are under his hair, which he grew out, which is
supposed to be the narrative device this season to differentiate between flashbacks.
So let’s try and figure this out together.
He isn’t Phineas Gage, he didn’t shoot up and through, that would be horribly disfiguring
and we would see that.
In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any frontal lobe damage at all.
He also didn’t hit his occipital lobe in the back of the brain, since his vision seems
to be intact.
The temporal lobes are the next candidate, but this would also damage his hearing and
speech, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
Which leaves us with the parietal lobe, which controls sensory and motor function, and given
his limp and later erectile issues, makes the most sense.
But he also has another plot-convenient symptom.
The bullet went up and in and out of my skull and into the wall, that’s what they told
me.
You don’t remember?
No, I don’t remember anything of like a month before that.
Okay forgetting that up and in an out doesn’t entirely make sense-
That’s not how amnesia works.
That’s not how any of this works.
There are several different types of memory and therefore several different types of amnesia.
There’s Implicit Memory, which is unconscious and pertains to things like language and skills,
and then there’s Explicit Memory, which is conscious and contains two parts.
Because everything so far contains two parts.
Firstly, there’s Semantic Memory, which is facts, definitions, and dates and stuff.
And secondly, Episodic Memory, which is events and experiences.
They don’t always have to be autobiographical, if you watch a movie or hear a story from
a friend, that’s logged as an Episodic Memory.
Whether it happened to you or not.
It would seem based on his recollection, that he’s lost his Autobiographical Episodic
Memory.
If you lose your memory for the past, that’s Retrograde Amnesia – everything from before
the damage or disease.
You can also lose the ability to form new memories, or Anterograde Amnesia, which is
what happened to Drew Barrymore in a movie that shall not be named, usually caused by
damage or disease to the subcortical structures, most notably the hippocampus.
It’s usually all or nothing when it comes to memory loss from physical damage to the
brain.
You can psychologically repress a memory for a traumatic event, so I can understand not
remembering the actual shooting itself.
But not remembering only a plot-specific month before the attempt is basically impossible.
With amnesia, he’d probably forget a ton of other things too, like people’s names,
his school schedule, or his facebook password.
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You’ll also be supporting the channel when you do.
The show gets a few things correct, but it also gets a lot of things wrong.
In order to depict some of these disorders, they have to crank it up to 11.
Showing a more accurate mild bipolar disorder wouldn’t really come across the screen that
well.
But in these exaggerations, they lose a lot of the nuance of human behavior, which can
lead people to dismiss actual mental health issues as not that bad.
If 13 Reasons Why is the standard you are holding people up to when thinking of disorders,
then very few people have disorders that need addressing.
Not everybody with schizophrenia hallucinates dead people.
The creators wanted to start a conversation, and now we can have that conversation, because
now, you know better.
Wow, look at all these new patrons!
Including my newest legendary patron, another Eric!
I can barely fit them anymore.
If you’d also like to climb into this clown car that is the end card, head on over to
patreon.com/knowingbetter.
What did you think of the show?
Let me know down below and don’t forget to… uhhh…
I… uhhh… hmm.
It’ll come to me, just gimme a…