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Letter: Takes issue with G-J headline

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I take exception to the headline in the Feb. 8 paper, titled “A typical teen in the center of a national debate.” The reason I take exception is the use of the word ‘typical’ when referring to this teen.

Conventional, traditional, ordinary and common are all words associated with the word typical. On the other hand, unusual, uncommon, aberrant and nonstandard are words associated with the word atypical.

I believe that Gavin, through her own admission, is more in the atypical category than typical. As a child, when she began to “withdraw from everyone and everything, suffered from extreme anxiety and depression, and became insecure, shy and almost paralyzingly introverted,” why was she not given the help and attention she is getting now?

Did her parents, a pastor, teacher or her doctor not see the need for psychiatric therapy at that time? Only now is it a concern, and only now is it newsworthy and being used as a politica...

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