As a concerned parent, Anna Quindlen addresses health care and insurance officials in order to bring about change to the perception and treatment of mentally ill teenagers.
In the first section of her essay, Anna Quindlen gives readers faces of mental illness. Through the examples of Kip Kinkel and Sam Manz, Quindlen builds pathos as readers empathize with young adolescents whose mental illnesses drove them to savage slayings of their peers. No longer are these young males statistics; they are real people who committed heinous acts of violence as a result of their mental illnesses. In fact, Quindlen points out, “the Kinkel and the Manzie boys had already been introduced to the mental-health system before their crimes.” However, these interventions were brief and rather inconsequential. Instead, people who interacted with these young men over-simplified their actions …show more content…
For example, Quindlen asserts, the “mental-health system is marginalized by shame, ignorance, custom, the courts, even by business practice.” If parents cannot get their children the help they need due to bureaucracy or sheer cost, then the system is broken and ineffective. Quindlen suggests that symptoms that manifest themselves in early childhood are not treated seriously and are swiftly swept under the rug “in less time than it takes to eat a Happy Meal”, which further exacerbates the problem. To build logos in her argument, Quindlen remarks that “at least 6 million children in this country have some serious emotional disturbance.” By so doing, Quindlen emphasizes the mental health crisis that the United States faces. No longer can victims be shut away in an institution, nor can they be subjected to barbaric lobotomies. Instead, Quindlen argues the health care and insurance industries must institute change in their approaches to the stigma of mental health
In the first section of her essay, Anna Quindlen gives readers faces of mental illness. Through the examples of Kip Kinkel and Sam Manz, Quindlen builds pathos as readers empathize with young adolescents whose mental illnesses drove them to savage slayings of their peers. No longer are these young males statistics; they are real people who committed heinous acts of violence as a result of their mental illnesses. In fact, Quindlen points out, “the Kinkel and the Manzie boys had already been introduced to the mental-health system before their crimes.” However, these interventions were brief and rather inconsequential. Instead, people who interacted with these young men over-simplified their actions …show more content…
For example, Quindlen asserts, the “mental-health system is marginalized by shame, ignorance, custom, the courts, even by business practice.” If parents cannot get their children the help they need due to bureaucracy or sheer cost, then the system is broken and ineffective. Quindlen suggests that symptoms that manifest themselves in early childhood are not treated seriously and are swiftly swept under the rug “in less time than it takes to eat a Happy Meal”, which further exacerbates the problem. To build logos in her argument, Quindlen remarks that “at least 6 million children in this country have some serious emotional disturbance.” By so doing, Quindlen emphasizes the mental health crisis that the United States faces. No longer can victims be shut away in an institution, nor can they be subjected to barbaric lobotomies. Instead, Quindlen argues the health care and insurance industries must institute change in their approaches to the stigma of mental health