Comparison of Articles on the Mental Health Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Statistics on the Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic on Mental Health by Joel Achenbach

Directions:

Read the postings of your peers in the "Comparison/Contrast Analysis" Discussion. Select at least TWO postings to respond to (about 100 words per each response). In each response, address the two elements your peer wrote about and offer your perspective on their ideas. Use examples from the readings to support your comments.

Post your responses as a reply to your peers' postings in the Discussion titled "Comparison/Contrast Analysis." 1, While reading the two articles, both of the authors make some really good points even though they're both talking about the same thing in their articles.

In Coronavirus is harming the mental health of tens of millions of people in U.S., new poll finds by Joel Achenbach, his beginning was more statistical than the one by Dr. Winch. He starts off by listing the percentage of the Americans who have been impacted by the pandemic because it has had such a great impact on our lives today.

He calls the event a "psychological nationwide trauma" and I completely agree with how he describes it, the people in that percentage are the ones whose mental health have been affected the most.

The beginning of Loneliness, anxiety, grief — dealing with the mental health impacts of the coronavirus: We can see this mental health crisis coming, yet we lack both national and international programs to address it by Guy Winch, tries to connect to the reader in a more sympathetic way in my opinion, he doesn't have any statistics like the other.

An interesting thing in the article written by Joel Achenbach, and this is by far the one who caught my eye the most, was the statistic that the majority in the percentage he said, were people such as women, Hispanic adults and Black adults. In the second article I read, you can see that Dr. Winch's article is more connecting to the reader.

I feel this way because of his article's purpose, I believe his purpose was a little more eye opening than the first article. Both of the article's purposes are really similar considering both of the articles were written to display information regarding the pandemic and the effect it had on many people's mental health, but Dr. Winch uses a perspective that really made me feel for the people he was talking about.

The people I'm trying to describe are the frontline medical workers, he does a fantastic job talking about how they're at risk of getting PTSD because of their sacrifices they're making to keep us safe.

I really enjoyed getting that perspective because at first, I already knew that the workers would super stressed out because how serious the pandemic was at the time, but I didn't know that the workers would fall victims to PTSD. 2, The audience of the article/writing piece you are publishing plays a tremendous role in the way you communicate your message.

It affects the complexity and structure of the information you are presenting greatly. That is why knowing who your intended audience is and catering to them will help you effectively convey your message.

In the two articles, one is addressing the general laity of the United States public, so the information and how it was presented catered to that audience.

The article was an easy read through, and was easy to grasp. It had short concise paragraphs that cited authorities in the field when needed, and did not deviate from this writing style a whole much.

Contrasting this to the 2nd article by Guy Winch, who is addressing the governments and institutions of the world, has a more academic and structured approach to his article.

The vocabulary used in the article was a lot more intense and descriptive as compared to the first one. This is evident by the fact that he intends on having his paper read by high ranking officials that are accustomed to a level of academia.

The tone of an article coveys how the author themselves view the writing piece and their attitude towards the topic. The first article by Joel Achenbach, had more of a neutral and educational tone to it.

The article appealed to a lot of hardcore evidence, which didn’t give the author himself to add much of his own input. Contrasting this to the 2nd article written by Guy Winch, you can feel the sense of urgency and the intensity of the message the author is trying to convey.

Since the author is a professional in the field himself, and writing from his own expertise, you can definitely grasp the first hand experience that the author has faced.

There is a lot of intimate emotion invoked through the article, which the reader can find themselves relating to. His tone befits the calamity that all of us are dealing with currently.