Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, Netflix’s latest true crime documentary, focuses on the mysterious case of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old college student who was reported missing in January 2013, and was found decomposing in one of the hotel’s rooftop water tanks a little over two weeks later. While her death was eventually ruled an accidental drowning by investigators, it was also largely attributed to her bipolar disorder and the apparent lack of medication in her system.

The mini-series, created by Joe Berlinger, features a traditional Netflix-style approach to true crime: a carefully chosen collection of voiceovers reading through Lam’s Tumblr, online “experts” and crusaders dedicated to finding the truth, LAPD detectives who worked on the case, and members of the Cecil Hotel staff. However, due to the mysterious series of events that took place prior to Lam’s death—most notably the security video capturing some of her last moments on one of the hotel’s elevators—the viewer is presented with a collection of possibilities instead of being walked through the case chronologically or in a way that builds off of the truth. While this approach can cross lines with regard to respecting the dead and Lam’s family (as none of the family members participated in the series), it also recreates the craze that had followers of her story obsessing to find Lam justice. The question is, however, at what cost?

There were a lot of factors to be considered in Lam’s disappearance and over the course of the investigation. For example, being in such close proximity to Los Angeles’ notorious Skid Row, could it have been possible that Lam crossed paths with a dangerous or crazed individual? Was she inspired to experiment with drugs, having traveled alone for the first time in her life? Was there another murderer staying in the hotel? (Infamous killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger had booked rooms in the past.) While watching the series, I’ll admit, I was sucked into the variety of possibilities, since I was unfamiliar with Lam’s disappearance. How they approached every avenue and even the crazy climb Lam might have had to make to reach the roof had me asking questions and thinking that surely, she wouldn’t have brought this fate upon herself.

Other avenues of speculation took on more wild conspiracies, such as blaming black metal musician Morbid, who stayed at the hotel one year prior to Lam’s disappearance; a hotel employee cover-up story; or maybe even ghosts chasing Lam to the roof. In being presented with such weak arguments, my haunted-house-loving self was leaning more towards the evil ghost story, from the strange and scary viral video of Lam moving in and out of the elevator and looking as though she’s conversing with someone who isn’t there, to all the possible souls forever damned at the hotel from murders, suicides, overdoses, and other unfortunate events.

However, by the end of the four-part documentary, I came to the sad realization that all these possibilities were really just ploys in continuing to ignore the truth of Lam’s mental illness. Thanks to pop culture and mass media, more often than not mental illness causes one to automatically mirror the term with “crazy.” Additionally, these portrayals can also lead to further stigmatization or trivialization, depending on context. And in looking back, I’m not sold on the idea of twisting up excitement over weak arguments alongside individuals who didn’t even personally know Lam to revive a nearly decade-old case. I mean, even American Horror Story: Hotel was able to pull off a Cecil Hotel-inspired season without making insensitive jabs at Lam. While the fifth installation of the fictional anthology arrived only two years after Lam’s discovery, its creators were able to highlight some of the other, more gruesome events that took place at the hotel instead.

While the Lam case is forever a staple in the hotel’s history, her story deserved more justice and a deeper look into how serious mental illness can become when ignored and untreated. Would it have made for a less interesting depiction of what transpired after the hotel’s elevator footage was released? Maybe not. But at least there would have been a dedicated and honest effort in telling Lam’s story by exploring the struggles she was under, and not a circling guessing game told by a collection of self-proclaimed internet investigators and half-hearted weigh-ins. While her family continues to grieve and prefers that the story be put to rest, if you’re going to choose to bring it back into the spotlight, why not focus on the hard-to-explain content? Why not help viewers understand the truth about mental illness? I guess because it would be too hard.

The unfortunate truth with this true-crime documentary is that it coasted on what it knew would get ratings, not the hard subjects like crime rates against foreign women before just chalking the whole thing up as a mental health case—something still too socially oppressed to be discussed in a documentary plagued with tunnel vision.