Kylo Ren Was Redeemed: Star Wars Fans Rejoice and So Should Psychiatric Educators

Potential Teaching Points Guerrero and Jamora [2] proposed that Episode 7 can help educators highlight certain tasks in caring for youth succumbed to violence and other disruptive behaviors: helping families to recognize adverse influences (e.g., addictive substances, brainwashing, threats of harm) and other risk factors; empathizing with the guilt that parents and family members feel when confronting the youth who rejects them; and using the biopsychosocial approach to ensure safety, remove the adverse influences, provide developmentally normal corrective experiences, and heal relationships. Comprehensively Address Negative Influences and Erroneous Thinking Hatters-Friedman and Hall noted that Kylo Ren had significant risk factors for psychopathology and for committing parricide, as he did in Episode 7 [7]. Like Anakin Skywalker, Kylo Ren had people in his life who believed in his redeemability and who provided (even via distance or posthumously) a corrective emotional experience. While “forgiveness” may not be a core feature of most standard psychotherapies taught in psychiatry curricula, certain traditional family healing approaches explicitly incorporate forgiveness, through facilitated communication (with ground rules for emotional expression) among family members, discussion of perceived transgressions and impact, release of the conflict and hurt, and restoration of relationships [12].