Running head: Psychiartic treatmentS

Psychiatric Treatments: Genre Analysis

Rebecca Gonzalez
University of Texas at El Paso

Introduction
Having or dealing with a mental disorder is an issue not to be taken lightly and should be
treated with the gentlest care. Two genres will be analyzed, one is typography and one
iconography. The iconography genre is an image from Buzzfeed with Winnie the Pooh characters
who have been associated with mental disorders. The typography genre is a website from Dual

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Diagnosis that explains the history of mental health treatments. These genres will be analyzed of
its audience, purpose, and rhetorical aspects that impact mental disorders and the institutions.
Audience and Purpose
The iconography picture from Buzzfeed has characters from the story Winnie the Pooh.
At a first glance, an adult may disregard the picture because of the characters that are intended
for children. The captions on each picture actually make the intended audience for psychologists,
psychology/medical students, adults who know the stories of Winnie the Pooh and people with
mental disorders. For instance, words like, narcissism and schizophrenia (Epstein, 2013), are
presented on the pictures which may be difficult for children to understand. The audience may
already know the other commonly heard words such as depression, anxiety, and ADHD or the
stories, movies, and shows of Winnie the Pooh. The audience may want to know how does the
story characters relate to the mental disorders and why does it matter? It can matter because it
can be just one of the hidden meanings behind these animated characters. As it is a picture with
just a few words, it should take the audience less than a minute to read it but around five or ten
minutes to look up the words they may not know. Generally, the main purpose of this genre is to
inform the audience with the comparisons that have been made of mental disorders to Winnie the
Pooh characters. Although the characters are fictional, a connection can still be made to prove
that having a mental disorder can happen to anyone. The audience is trying to convince the
community that they should think differently about people with mental disorders because of how
common it really is. Due to the complexed captions, the pictures language is more formal
because of its specialized medical terms but it would be informal without its captions. Thus,
making it appropriate for the intended audience.
The typography website from Dual Diagnosis has a section on the history of mental
health treatment. This websites audience is targeted towards people who may be concerned with
a mental disorder, have a mental disorder or are psychologists, medical personal, and

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psychology/medical students. With the influence of movies, television shows, books, and any
entertainment aspect, the audience may already have a preconceived idea of the type of
treatments mentally ill people may encounter. Even though some of the treatments from movies
and such may be elaborated, their based ideas had to come from actual real life treatments. The
audience may want to know what treatments actually happened and what treatments were madeup. This should make the time it takes to read the web page around ten to fifteen minutes and an
additional five minutes to go through the timeline, analyze the charts, and look up unknown
words. Therefore, taking roughly around twenty minutes to spend on the information in total.
Based on the information, the ideal purpose of this typography genre is to inform but also
perhaps persuade. In order to persuade, some type of background information is needed to give a
convincing argument so this web page is the background information. As the audience is mainly
ones who are giving the treatment, they need to be informed of old practices to better persuade
how it can be improved in a healthier fashion. For example, it suggests, Rather than silencing
them with restraints and drugs, experts now want to partner with patients and help them. This
could bring about a form of mental health treatment everyone could support (2016). It is not
directly stating that there needs to be a great awareness of the treatments but it is being implied.
The language is simple but it is formal and direct like in this sentence, In the 1940s and 1950s,
chemists began to experiment with different powders and pills that could calm imbalances inside
the brain and deliver real relief to people who had mental illnesses (2016). With the audience
being mostly of medical people, the specialized language with medical terms, such as Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome and Lobotomies (2016), is appropriate for the audience and purpose because
they will eventually learn about them or already know what it is.
Both genres are similar in that they both have medical terms and are associated with
mental illnesses. The authors both conducted the same purpose of informing the normality of the

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mental illnesses and how they should be taken more lightly. The picture and the webpage seem to
be viewed by the same audience because of their specialized vocabulary and language which
requires a base knowledge of it. On the contrary, both genres did have some differences. The
Winnie the Pooh picture had based its idea on the comparison aspect from characters to medical
terms as to the webpage on the history of mental illnesses were centralized on facts and data. It
takes a longer time to analyze and read the webpage than with the quick view of the picture.
Overall, both the iconography and typography genres were trying to inform on the impact of
mental illnesses and how to better improve them.
Rhetorical Aspects: Ethos
The Winnie the pooh character picture comes from a credible website called Buzzfeed. It
is a worldwide entertainment and social company that provides trending and breaking news. It is
founded by a credible man name John Peretti, a Massachusetts Institute Technology graduate,
who was also the co-founder of another popular news website, The Huffington Post (Epstein,
2013). Buzzfeed obtains an audience of over 200 million viewers on the website and even more
on their Youtube channel (Epstein, 2013). The characters themselves are from the stories of
Winnie the Pooh written by A.A. Milne. His books were franchised by the credible Disney
company. It was made into multiple movies and television shows making it known worldwide.
On the other hand, the typography website was more credible with their references. Each
fact, chart, and picture were accompanied with an in-text citation. The website is also labeled
with the domain name org which is considered a top level source making it a more reliable
reference. The base of the website, Dual Diagnosis, is noted as a foundation recovery network so
it is idealized around helping people with mental disorders and addiction problems (2016).
Therefore, making it helpful for the audience to achieve the purpose of this genre. With that, both
genres have their credible aspects which do establish their information effectively throughout.

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Although, the picture does have a more recognizable background from a worldwide company, it
makes the iconography genre slightly more credible than the typography genre.
Pathos
In the iconography image, some emotions are evoked when viewing the picture. The
characters can reflect back onto childhood memories for the adult audience who watched or read
the Winnie the Pooh series. Now, as the audience is mostly adults, they can compare and contrast
the characters and mental disorders to realize how it can actually make sense. All the images are
compressed into one grid with a gray background so this may prove to the audience of the dark
hidden meaning behind the characters and make them wonder if all their childhood cartoon
characters are similar. Also, if the audience has a mental disorder as one of the characters, they
can retail details from the characters and compare to themselves making them feel different of
how they are.
The Dual Diagnosis website has a fair amount of pathos in their text. They include
multiple quotes from actual people who lived in a mental institution or from books such as this
one, I could not sleep, so I lay in bed picturing to myself the horrors in case a fire should break
out in the asylum (2016). This may make the audience emotionally understand what was
happening and feel sorrow for the patients. With the list of diagnosis that made people be put in
the mental institution in the 1800s like, menstruation-related anger or disobedience (2016), can
create a sense of empathy because those disorders today are not commonly considered a mental
problem. With these means, both genres did create some type of emotional appeal but the image
brought back childhood memories while the website made the audience feel sympathy for people
with mental disorders.
Logos
The Winnie the Pooh image did not have any logical evidence to support it. Its evidence
was based on the audiences own thoughts and realizations towards discovering if it was true or
not. On the other hand, the website gave multiple facts, definitions, and charts to prove their

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statements were logical and precise. In one study of the issue, conducted in 1988, researchers
found that 28 percent of the homeless people they studied had a diagnosable mental illness
(2016), is just one example and an in text citation was provided that was found in the reference
page. There was also charts to prove the differences in patient in take throughout the years. In
comparison, the website had a lot of logical evidence and the image did not have any.
Structure and Delivery
Since one genre is a website and the other is a picture, they both have their differences
and freedoms. The iconography genre is limited to only graphics and minimal text but it can take
a short time to analyze. The image is a collage of the characters with a one-word text on it. This
makes it easier to compare with all the other characters and see how they relate to each other.
The bright images and the gray background can imply the hidden dark message behind the
message. The typography genre has more freedom to layout its text and put as much as possible
but can take longer to analyze. The website is organized with text and then a chart to help
visualize the factual evidence. The font is Arial style which is more appealing and easier to read.
Both genres have their structure and delivery expressed in a different structure but they both
address the audience in an easier to comprehend way.
Conclusion
With the iconography genre having less freedom than the typography, it was harder to
give a full message. In both genres, their fonts and visuals did help contribute to their message
like the charts from the website and the capital typed font from the image. The genre that was
more effective in conveying its message was the typography website because of its full use of
ethos, pathos, and especially logos. Both of these genres had their own type of impact but they
both conveyed a message to prove to the audience that mental institutions and people with
mental disorders are not to be dealt with lightly.

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References
(2016). History of Mental Health Treatment. Dual Diagnosis. Retrieved February 12, 2016, from
http://www.dualdiagnosis.org/mental-health-and-addiction/history/
Epstein, L. (2013, July 17). This Will Completely Change Your Perception. Buzzfeed. Retrieved
February 12, 2016, from http://www.buzzfeed.com/leonoraepstein/this-will-completelychange-your-perception-of-winnie-the-po#.skRAGvGaV