Seems many people who never saw the show still managed to form strong opinions. It served a purpose in clarifying relationships where parents had significantly failed their children, and I know a number who have used it for DNA testing.
The rot set in a couple of years ago when it became personal. JK was obsessed with fathers' rights, irrespective of children's interests, and became a self-identified moral guardian "I will make sure no woman / man ever looks at you again".
To maintain its edge, thecshow had to keep pushing boundaries. Research seems to have fallen by the wayside, with great parents one day being challenged for abandoning previous children the next, and always with JK's insistence that he could read people like a book being in direct contrast to the anarchy of the edited versions.
What has happened sounds tragic. I am sure neither JK nor the show's production team wished for anyone to die, but the artificially inflated confrontations meant that it was perhaps always a possibility. A shame that people resort to this kind of public laundry because low-key, local support services are simply no longer available.