French researchers are doing their bit to make discussing mental health problems acceptable.
Psychiatrist Eric Bui and his colleagues at Toulouse University Hospital have written a letter in the journal Psychiatry Research entitled “Is Anakin Skywalker suffering from borderline personality disorder?”
For those of you not familiar with the Star Wars saga, Anakin Skywalker starts out as a heroic Jedi knight but later turns to the “Dark Side” and becomes the arch-villain Darth Vader.
Bui says Anakin Skywalker meets six out the nine diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and could perhaps have been helped by psychotherapy.
Very entertaining research, of course but is it of any use? Bui and his colleagues argue that this study is important in several respects. It can help teach students about BPD; it can help explain the appeal of Star Wars to teenagers who present more frequent BPD traits than others; and perhaps most importantly it can help increase recognition and acceptance of mental illness.
Recent VA studies have shown that the public have a low confidence in the potential of research to help prevent or cure mental illness. Any high profile sufferer – even if he is fictional – can perhaps help to address this issue.
// Esther Crooks
Some links
Darth Vader: May the Shrink be with you (The Guardian)
Kommentarer om “Darth Vader just needed some psychotherapy”