Developed for Netflix by Brian Yorkey and with Selena Gomez serving as an executive producer under her July Moon Productions banner, the series stars Dylan Minnette and Katherine Langford alongside an ensemble cast and follows the students of the fictional Liberty High School and the wide range of social issues affecting modern youth.

The first season received positive reviews from critics and audiences, who praised its themes, emotional weight, subject matter, character development and acting, particularly the performances of Minnette and Langford.

Ani Achola, a new student at Liberty High, narrates the season as Clay and his friends struggle to keep Tyler's attempted school shooting a secret and to help him in his recovery.

In the fourth and final season, Clay's mental health deteriorates as a result of the deaths of Bryce and Monty, while the other students of Liberty High plan for their impending graduation and future.

[25] It was dedicated to executive producer Steve Golin (founder and CEO of Anonymous Content), who died of Ewing's sarcoma on April 21, 2019, four months before the third season's release.

[5][6] In June 2016, Dylan Minnette, Katherine Langford, Christian Navarro, Alisha Boe, Brandon Flynn, Justin Prentice, Miles Heizer, Ross Butler, Devin Druid and Brian d'Arcy James were cast as the main leads.

Brown, Anne Winters, Bryce Cass, Chelsea Alden, Allison Miller, Brandon Butler, Samantha Logan, Kelli O'Hara, and Ben Lawson were cast for season two.

The website's critical consensus reads, "13 Reasons Why complements its bestselling source material with a gripping look at adolescent grief whose narrative maturity belies its YA milieu.

"[54] Maureen Ryan of Variety asserts that the series "is undoubtedly sincere, but it's also, in many important ways, creatively successful" and called it "simply essential viewing".

[55] Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly gave the entire season a score of B+, calling the series "a frank, authentically affecting portrait of what it feels like to be young, lost and too fragile for the world".

The actress' performance is full of dynamic range, setting it against Minnette's often more complicated task in differentiating between moods that mostly go from uncomfortable to gloomy to red-eyed, hygiene-starved despair.

[55] Positive mentions from various critics, such as Ryan, Feinberg and Schedeen, were also given to the supporting cast of actors (most particularly Alisha Boe, Miles Heizer and Christian Navarro's respective performances as Jessica, Alex and Tony).

Feinberg highlighted the series' directors, saying: "A Sundance-friendly gallery of directors including Tom McCarthy, Gregg Araki and Carl Franklin keeps the performances grounded and the extremes from feeling exploitative",[58] while Gilbert of The Boston Globe praised the storytelling: "The storytelling techniques are powerful ... [as it] builds on the world established in the previous hour, as we continually encounter new facets of Hannah's life and new characters.

Mike Hale of The New York Times wrote a critical review, writing, "the show doesn't make [Hannah's] downward progress convincing.

"[60] The Washington Post television critic Hank Stuever wrote a negative review, finding 13 Reasons Why "contrived" and implausible: "There are 13 episodes lasting 13 super-sullen hours – a passive-aggressive, implausibly meandering, poorly written, and awkwardly acted effort that is mainly about miscommunication, delivering no more wisdom or insight about depression, bullying, and suicide than one of those old ABC Afterschool Specials people now mock for being so corny."

The story ... strikes me as remarkably, even dangerously, naive in its understanding of suicide, up to and including a gruesome, penultimate scene of Hannah opening her wrists in a bathtub.

The site's critical consensus states, "By deviating from its source material, 13 Reasons Why can better explore its tenderly crafted characters; unfortunately, in the process, it loses track of what made the show so gripping in the first place.

She ends the review saying that, "Unrelenting depression seems to shroud the season, briefly lifted only to collapse back down as the show's thirteenth episode, once again, delivers a deeply disturbing scene of suffering.

[66] A scene in which the character Tyler Down (Devin Druid) is attacked and sexually assaulted with a mop handle by bully Montgomery De La Cruz (Timothy Granaderos) during the finale also caused controversy from fans and critics of the series, with some describing it as "unnecessary" and "traumatizing".

[67] Series showrunner Brian Yorkey defended the scene, saying that it was included in an attempt to "tell truthful stories about things that young people go through in as unflinching a way as we can".

The site's critical consensus states: "13 Reasons Why closes with a chaotic final chapter that betrays what little dignity remained in the tragic lives of its central teens.

Jumpshot, which "analyzes click-stream data from an online panel of more than 100 million consumers", looked at the viewing behavior and activity of the company's U.S. members, factoring in the relative number of U.S. Netflix viewers who watched at least one episode of the season.

Some researchers and medical professionals argue that the series violated guidelines for depicting suicide in the media and might trigger "imitative" behaviors among high school students and vulnerable people.

[99][101] After the series' release, a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that suicide among teenagers rose by 28.9 percent in the month after Netflix launched the show.

This community also expressed major concerns about the series romanticizing suicide, not providing adequate resources at the conclusion of each episode, targeting a young vulnerable audience, and painting mental health professionals as unhelpful and not worth seeing.

[132] The following month, the United States Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP) released a statement also noting how strongly the series may serve as a trigger for self-injury among vulnerable youth.

[133] Similarly, clinical psychologists such as Daniel J. Reidenberg and Erika Martinez, as well as mental health advocate MollyKate Cline of Teen Vogue magazine, have expressed concerns regarding the risk of suicide contagion.

"[138] Other counselors criticized the depiction of Hannah's attempt to reach out to Mr. Porter as dangerously misleading, since not only does he miss obvious signs of her suicidal ideations but says he cannot report her sexual assault to the police without her identifying the assailant.

[138] In May 2017, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) along with the Centre for Suicide Prevention (CSP) released a statement with similar concerns to the ones raised by NASP.

"[140][141] A 2019 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that the overall suicide rate among 10- to 17-year-olds increased by 28.9 percent in April 2017, the month immediately following the release of the first season.