Anna Quindlen The Word C In The Hallway

In Anna Quindlen’s essay, “The word C in the Hallway,” she says that mental health is a big problem for teenagers, because they do not get enough help from society. The first idea Anna learned was “psychological autopsy,” which make her feel sad, because doctors do not pay enough attention to psychological evaluation in the beginning, only after crimes. Anna writes, “Everyone searches for reasons, and scapegoats, and solution, most often punitive (344).” In another words, nobody wants to be responsible for this serious problem. Anna thinks that in the same time, when everybody ignores the mental illness as illness, a lot of teenagers already been lost. For example, Kip Kinkel killed his parents and two students from his high school. Sam Manzie strangled an eleven-year old boy at his house.

Moreover, they tried to fix it by introducing teenagers to the mental health system. Kip’s father even was disappointed about his son’s therapy. Sam’s father was just interested in how much his insurance would cover treatment. Also, Anna says that “The federal center for Mental Health Service estimates that at least six million children in this country have some serious emotional disturbance(345).” Nevertheless, most of them, as a result are in jail, although “psychological intervention is cheaper than incarceration(345).” As the third idea, she makes the point that just one-third of emotionally disturbed children are getting any treatment. Probably, because society do not know how to accept this problem, and how to help those children. She writes that health insurance does not provide coverage for this illness. Teachers do not know how to recognize mental disturbance. Furthermore, parents are afraid and ashamed that their children have such mental problems. As a result, Anna claims that teenagers are in depression, because of adult do not want to accept them in