13 Reasons Why...Too Much For 6th Graders?

This is my second post for 13 Reasons Why because I keep going back to it, thinking and wondering if it would be appropriate to read with my 6th graders, and my answer quite simply is, "no."  Although my students do know a lot and have participated in discussions about bullying and affects it can have on other kids, I just feel like it's too much for my little sixth graders.  As much as they act as if "they know it all" they are still babies.  Not that I want to shelter them from reality, but I think this would be too much.  At the beginning of the year, a few of our eighth graders did a presentation on bullying.  What was supposed to be an informative and supportive presentation to the sixth grade, turned into a "doom and gloom" presentation of examples of kids who were bullied and eventually committed suicide.  Personally, I think it was too much for my grade level.  With all of this said, I do think it's important to communicate the realities of what does and can happen when someone is "poked at" day after day after day, such as Hannah.  I think students could relate, not only with Hannah, but with the others that made Hannah feel the way she did to lead her to commit such an unthinkable act.  No matter who the student is, I think they could step into the shoes of at least one of the characters in this book. 
As an educator, I feel as if I sometimes forget about all the changes middle schoolers are going through.  They are going through transitions, trying to figure out who they are, who their friends are, where they fit.   I think about the students I have that are exemplar communicators.  They are able to communicate their feelings to their friends, adults, and other trustworthy people.  These students are usually the ones who know themselves and don't let others bother them.  I also think about those students who are not communicators.  These students communicate with almost noone; their friends, adults, a trustworthy person.  It's those students I worry about and fear for because noone really knows what he/she is going through.  I worry that if that student is going through something intense, they have no outlet.  How, as an educator, can I get through to these students that it's okay to tell someone?  How can I, as one person, do something to make students realize that there is at least one person who is trustworthy enough to confide in?  I think about this often because I sometimes forget that such small things to me are HUGE to a sixth grader.
I ask myself another question....How do I connect this to my academic classroom?  As a 6th grade math teacher, I am so focused on my 57 minutes of Math I get that I don't usually deviate to "teach" or conduct a different activity on this sort of topic just because of time constraints.   However, if I were to conduct a learning activity, I would certainly use 13 Reasons Why as a springboard.  I would use the following to drive my instruction:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story’s or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.
I am not familiar with the CCSS for Language Arts however in looking through, this standard seems as if it would cater the best to develop a conversation/dialogue about how a character, like Hannah, dealt with the happenings at high school.  Students would also need to put themselves in the shoes of the other characters in the tapes.  Perhaps they could relate to one of them and reflect on how they could change or how they feel about connecting with that particular character.