Running head: CARING FOR THE MENTAL HEALTH OF CHILDREN 1

Caring for the Mental Health of Children and Young People

Aylin Caudillo
The University of Texas at El Paso
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Caring for the Mental Health of Children and Young People

5 million children in the U.S suffer from some type of mental illness, mental illness such

as anxiety, ADHD, disruptive behavior disorders, learning and communication disorders. These

mental illnesses can affect their learning and their relationship with their peers and teachers. The

issue of mental health in kids is being addressed through two genres that support the awareness

of mental illness in young children. In the book, An Introduction to Child and Adolescent Mental

Health (Maddie Burton, Erica Pavord and Briony Williams, 2014) the authors educate their

audience about the mental illness that children suffer from. The second genre is a YouTube

video, SchoolLink: Caring for the mental health needs of children and young people posted by

HNEkidshealth (2015). This video is a personal anecdote that tells the audience how leaving

mental illness untreated can affect young children. These genres and their claims will be

discussed further in this paper.

Audience and Purpose

The first genre, An Introduction to Child and Adolescent Mental Health (2014) is a book

intended for people working with children, young people and people studying fields related to

school psychology. The purpose of this genre was to inform the audience about mental health

illness in children and young people. The second genre, SchoolLink: Caring for the mental

health needs of children and young people (2015) is a YouTube video intended for parents,

teachers, and school counsellors. The purpose of this genre was to raise awareness for mental

health in children because of the ways that the illness can affect their life both in school and out

of school.

The discourse community of the book can be from educators, school psychologist, and

social workers. The audience already knows that mental health issues exist within children, ;
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however, they want to educate themselves more about them and how it can affect children

personally.

The intended audience of the video, SchoolLink: Caring for the mental health needs of

children and young people is anyone interested in the needs of mental health in kids. Discourse

communities can be parents that have kids dealing with mental illness, educators, and

counsellors. The audience already knows that students suffer of mental illness, mental illness that

can affect their behavior and disturb their learning in school. The audience wants to know how

they can help the kid dealing with mental illness.

The purpose of educating people of mental health in children and paying awareness to it

remains the same in both genres. However, genre one is more educational and genre two is more

of a public service announcement.

Both genres differ in the amount of time required to cover the information and the time

that the audience should spend with each genre. The first genre is presented through a book, a

book which contains a lot of information and cannot be skimmed through quickly. The audience

in the first genre needs to be interested in the topic in order to be able to analyze and read the

book. Also, the time spent on the first genre depends on how much the audience wants to analyze

the information given to them. The second genre is a YouTube video that lasts a total of 2

minutes and 29 seconds. The video being brief helps because it maintains the audience attention.

Rhetorical Issues

Both genres exhibit rhetorical appeals; the way they are shown and represented differ in

accordance with the genre.

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Ethos

Ethos is a way to convince an audience of an argument by credibility. The first genre An

Introduction to Child and Adolescent Mental Health (2014), establishes credibility with the

audience due to the fact that the authors provide an About the Authors page. In this page, we

learn that all three authors have a career in mental health. Maddie Burton is a registered Mental

Health nurse. Erica Pavord has worked as a counsellor for children, young people and families.

Briony Williams is an Occupational Therapist and worked in many mental health settings

including substance misuse. The second genre, SchoolLink: Caring for the mental health needs

of children and young people posted by HNEkidshealth (2015) attempts to establish its

credibility by in the bio providing an email link that corresponds to the government local health

district.

Pathos

Pathos is an appeal to emotion, it is a way to convince an audience of an argument by

creating an emotional response. The book is not evoking an emotion, since it is taking an

educational approach. The emotion the video is attempting to evoke is empathy. An emotion

where the audience wants to get kids the help they need in order for them to be able to perform

better in school. The video is all about how a kid is suffering of learning and communication

disorder. This affects the kid in many ways, some of those ways being difficulty making friends,

and difficulty paying attention in class. This personal anecdote, creates empathy, to where the

audience should not yell at the kid, and call them names such as “troublemakers” instead the

audience should talk to the kid and see if maybe he needs to go see a counsellor or a

psychologist.
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Logos

Logos is an appeal to logic, it is a way of persuading an audience with reason. In the

video SchoolLink: Caring for the mental health needs of children and young people posted by

HNEkidshealth (2015) there is no evidence used to support claims, however what the video uses

to help support the information presented is a personal anecdote and a call of action at the end of

the video.

In the book, An Introduction to Child and Adolescent Mental Health (2014), The type of

evidence that is used to support claim is other sources that the authors have referenced in text

and provided full citation at the end of each chapter. The evidence is valid, most of the evidence

is from government websites or articles and scholarly articles.

Both genres use government research to make their evidence valid.

Structure and Delivery

In the book An Introduction to Child and Adolescent Mental Health (2014) the

information is organized to convey it message by telling the audience at the beginning of the

chapter what they will be informed about. Followed by a thesis sentence that helps as a transition

to the main focus of the following paragraph. There are no limitations placed on the information

because of the genre. The genre has a lot of freedom to express what it needs to because it is for

educational purposes. At some point it even tells us the counterargument. For example, many

people think that mental health issues do not exist in little kids. They acknowledge this, but then

informed their audience on why mental health issues do exist in young children. The structure

facilitates its purpose because the organization of the book and the information given makes it

easier for the audience to follow and connect all the topics together. The language is very formal,

it is in third person. A lot of specialized vocabulary is not used. It is just mental health and
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science words. However, a lot of abbreviations are used after a mental illness has been

introduced into the book for example ADHD. Other language features that one can notice is that

there’s a lot of list (visuals). The font and type are normal like any other book.

In the second genre, SchoolLink: Caring for the mental health needs of children and

young people posted by HNEkidshealth (2015) the information is organized in a story mode to

convey its message. The only limitations this genre has is a time limitation. I believe the video

does not have all the freedom to express what it needs to express due to language and content

restriction since it is posted on YouTube. The structure facilitates its purpose by making it easier

for the audience to relate to the problem at hand, since they used a personal anecdote. The

language is pretty informal: it’s as if you were just listening to a person tell a story about their

hardships in elementary school. No specialized vocabulary is used, anyone that is not

familiarized with the mental health field or education field will be able to fully understand the

purpose of the video. Other language features were, that important messages are in a cursive like

font and in a color that pops from the background. Overall the video has a lot of color and it is

animated.

Conclusion

Overall, both genres discussed the main topic in a satisfactory way. The first genre was

more educational than the second genre, but the second genre allowed for an easier

understanding due to the personal anecdote. Each genre interpreted the same information but in a

different way. Both genres raise awareness to pay attention to the mental health of young

children since they do exist, and it does affect their academic excellence and their everyday life.
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References

M. Burton, E. Pavord, & B. Williams (2014). An introduction to child and adolescent mental
health Los Angeles: SAGE.

HNEkidshealth. (2016, October 25). School-Link: Caring for the mental health needs of children

and young people. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmSinPMVU2U

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