Stephen Seager Where Hell Is Other Patients Summary

In "Where Hell Is Other Patients," Stephen Seager explains everything wrong with today's hospitals for the criminally insane. Seager emphasis the fact that modern laws and regulations fail to protect the staff of these hospitals, allowing some violent patients to continually assault their caretakers. He also points out that assaults on les violent patients is also a problem. Seager claims that these problems come not only form poor governmental regulations, but also from oversights by the hospitals themselves. Seager also goes on to call out some of the organizations that are supposed to help out the patients and staff of these hospitals, saying that they are ineffective. He concludes by suggesting several ways that hospitals and the government could work together and solve many problems. Seager establishes his good credibility right of the bat by stating that he is a staff member at a hospital that treats the criminally insane. This helps the audience trust Seager due to the fact that Seager has almost an infinitely greater knowledge of the inner workings of one of these mental hospitals than the average audience member. Because of this, the audience must rely on Seager's claims or verify them using other sources or experiences. Readers are also convinced simply because of the place where it was read. The New York Times is one of the most famous editorials I the United States, and the editors can generally only choose factually sound and well written articles in order to avoid a decline in sales or some sort of embarrassment. Therefore, Seager is already considered a prestigious scholar by the audience before the readers even know his name or read his article. This combined with the fact that he is already a working member of the group that he is writing about, makes Seager trustworthy in the eyes of the audience. Seager establishes a strong emotional appeal. He uses well worded sentences to bring the audience to understand how he feels about it. Addressing the fact that the public imagines mental facilities are hellish places, Seager states that “it’s true that these hospitals, including the one where I work, are hellish.” This is important for him to say, because people will often agree with a writer that says what the reader believes. This is called confirmation bias. Another tool that Seager uses to appeal to his readers’ emotions is imagery. This really helps the reader feel what he feels about the subject, thus the reader can be convinced of Seager’s argument more easily. Seager states, “a patient pummeled another patient with a broken chair leg — fracturing both of the victim’s arms […] Staff members ran into the day hall to see an unconscious patient on the floor, blood oozing onto the yellow tile, his assailant’s red shoe prints leading down the hallway.” This demonstrates how graphic these psychiatric hospitals can get, especially to the readers. Seager also gives the reader somebody to blame. This helps the reader feel that this problem is relevant because somebody can fix it. This makes Seager’s issue …show more content…
He not only strengthens his arguments, he attacks the organizations that he blames for causing the problems. This creates a two way appeal to logic. He shows an example for this effect. He states, “For example, despite criminally insane patients being remanded by the courts for psychiatric treatment, many states allow them to refuse both therapy and medication.” He explains the example beforehand to make sure the audience knows what he’s talking about. Through all of this, Stephen Seager does quite a remarkable job when he uses reasoning to convince his audience.
Stephen Seager does quite a good job on his article, “Where Hell Is Other Patients.” This is not very surprising considering that he wrote it for the New York Times. He has exceptional credibility, especially since he works at the hospitals that he is constantly describing. His emotional appeal is way above average due to his imagery and ability to manipulate words. His logical appeal is backed by numerous facts and statistics that are not misleading. Seager has definitely done the best he can to convince his audience that mental health institutions are hellish places, and not always for just the