[OB] Kaladin... Man that dude is awesome...

[digitalbusker he/him]

3 minutes ago, straits said:

As a side point: Kaladin post-duel is a prime example of why peacefully airing your grievances to the elites does not work. He won the favour of the lighteyes crowd, and held the confidence of Dalinar after putting his life on the line for his highborn sons. When he verbally and publicly accused Amaram of the wrongs he committed, he was thrown in prison despite all of his achievements and it took all of Dalinar's clout not to have him executed for daring to step up to the supremacist masters.

You're right, of course. I'm not pretending to have the answers to this dilemma. I agree that the slave is not morally obligated to have a new Constitution in their back pocket when fighting back against their enslavement.

But at some point somebody has to do more than fight back against oppression. Somebody has to put thought into bulking a system that's just for all participants, or else you just have a parade of rotating oppressors.

As for violent versus peaceful protest, I think neither is sufficient alone. If we assume the ultimate end goal is something like a democracy where everybody has a say in the government, but the rights of historical out groups are protected, then the nature of their grievances must be discussed, if only to give the privileged the vocabulary to understand what they've been doing all this time. Otherwise you can't safely share power after the violent overthrow of the old order, and we're back to Parade of Oppression.

[Subvisual Haze]

On 12/16/2017 at 5:42 PM, Kered said:

My only complaint is that he was the same amount of depressing and self-deprecating as he was in WoR and WoK. But I feel he had better reasons to be those things in previous books compared to this one. I know he's grown a lot in other areas, but it just seems that even the smallest of triggers leads to a Kaladin dark mood in this book. That's only a small thing though, and next to Szeth and Dalinar, I think his POV's in OB are my favorite. 

He has recurrent depression.  The awful truth of depression is that it doesn't just "go away forever" when life gets better.  You can have good times, but depression is always lingering in the shadows of your soul, waiting to overtake you.  It doesn't even need a good reason to strike sometimes, you can get depressed for absolutely no reason.  And you hate yourself it, for not being stronger, you hate that you can't just will yourself to be happy and normal.

I've said it before, but Kaladin is an absolutely brilliant fictional portrayal of a person struggling with depression.  I love how he keeps straining to carry that burden.  I can absolutely understand why people get frustrated with his continued struggles, indeed it's a good insight by the author to the reader into what having depression feels like, it's frustrating as hell.

[aemetha he/him]

1 hour ago, Subvisual Haze said:

I've said it before, but Kaladin is an absolutely brilliant fictional portrayal of a person struggling with depression.

I disagree. The rapidity of Kaladin's swings to depressed and not depressed is not a good example of depression. It's a good example of bipolar, without the manic phase, if you're looking at it specifically as an example of depression without considering other factors. To be clinically depressed the episodes must last longer than two weeks, so much of what Kaladin is described as experiencing doesn't fit that category when you exclude other explanations for his behaviour.

What Kaladin's depiction is a good example of is seasonal affective disorder. Any other bouts of depressed behaviour need to be considered in the context of the circumstances. A person is not clinically depressed if they are sad because they just saw people they are responsible for slaughtered for example - they are behaving exactly as one would expect any normal person to react in that circumstance.

The mindset depicted however is a good example of a depressed mindset, which is consistent across both depression and seasonal affective disorder.

[Subvisual Haze]

2 minutes ago, aemetha said:

I disagree. The rapidity of Kaladin's swings to depressed and not depressed is not a good example of depression. It's a good example of bipolar, without the manic phase, if you're looking at it specifically as an example of depression without considering other factors. To be clinically depressed the episodes must last longer than two weeks, so much of what Kaladin is described as experiencing doesn't fit that category when you exclude other explanations for his behaviour.

What Kaladin's depiction is a good example of is seasonal affective disorder. Any other bouts of depressed behaviour need to be considered in the context of the circumstances. A person is not clinically depressed if they are sad because they just saw people they are responsible for slaughtered for example - they are behaving exactly as one would expect any normal person to react in that circumstance.

The mindset depicted however is a good example of a depressed mindset, which is consistent across both depression and seasonal affective disorder.

As a clinical pharmacist with a Doctorate of Pharmacy who worked in an inpatient psychiatric unit for 2 years, I disagree with your disagreement.

SAD is a sub-category of either MDD or BPD1/2, it's not a disorder unto itself.  It has the same diagnostic criteria of either MDD or BPD1/2, just the symptoms follow a certain pattern and light treatment has a more central place in therapy.  

[aemetha he/him]

Okay, but that's kind of semantic since the inclusion of seasonal affective disorder as a sub-category rather than a distinct category is far from uncontroversial. There is clearly a difference in the disorders because if light was not an issue most people with seasonal affective disorder wouldn't regularly become depressed. My point is that Kaladin only gets depressed in response to light, or in response to situations in which it is perfectly normal to have a depressed mood. That is not consistent with most cases of major depressive disorder. Major depressive order does not recur every couple of months and last for very transient periods, but depressed mood from depressing events does.

My own qualifications are that I have seasonal affective disorder, and I study psychology and have written numerous assignments on the counselling of people with major depressive disorder. I can't expect a successful resolution of depression through counselling alone in a case of seasonal affective disorder, the best I can hope for is to teach a person to manage it - which includes light therapy. In a case of major depressive disorder, it is not unreasonable to expect that cognitive approaches to the problem can resolve the issue. In terms of treating the issue there is a considerable distinction.

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09020188

[Awesomness]

1 hour ago, aemetha said:

The rapidity of Kaladin's swings to depressed and not depressed is not a good example of depression. It's a good example of bipolar, without the manic phase, if you're looking at it specifically as an example of depression without considering other factors. To be clinically depressed the episodes must last longer than two weeks, so much of what Kaladin is described as experiencing doesn't fit that category when you exclude other explanations for his behaviour.

This may be due to the book´s pacing...

[Subvisual Haze]

59 minutes ago, aemetha said:

Okay, but that's kind of semantic since the inclusion of seasonal affective disorder as a sub-category rather than a distinct category is far from uncontroversial. There is clearly a difference in the disorders because if light was not an issue most people with seasonal affective disorder wouldn't regularly become depressed. My point is that Kaladin only gets depressed in response to light, or in response to situations in which it is perfectly normal to have a depressed mood. That is not consistent with most cases of major depressive disorder. Major depressive order does not recur every couple of months and last for very transient periods, but depressed mood from depressing events does.

My own qualifications are that I have seasonal affective disorder, and I study psychology and have written numerous assignments on the counselling of people with major depressive disorder. I can't expect a successful resolution of depression through counselling alone in a case of seasonal affective disorder, the best I can hope for is to teach a person to manage it - which includes light therapy. In a case of major depressive disorder, it is not unreasonable to expect that cognitive approaches to the problem can resolve the issue. In terms of treating the issue there is a considerable distinction.

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09020188

On the one hand the APA DSM-V diagnostic criteria used by every clinician in the country, on the other an editorial written by an MD from 2009?  I don't want to get into an academic member-waving contest, but I participate in the actual screening, diagnosis, referrals, and adjustments of medications for patients.  Kaladin clearly has major depressive disorder with seasonal subtype.  (Brandon states as much in annotations, and notes that his own wife suffers from MDD).  This doesn't preclude him from having episodes out of season.  The short events we've seen him have are abortive depressive episodes.  Without his own actions and the support of Syl+Adolin those likely would have progressed into a full depressive state.  This is a mirror of what we do in the real world, patients feel themselves getting depressed and get their meds tweaked or more follow up counseling sessions to hopefully abort the episode before they bottom out.  If we manage to get the patient's PHQ score back into the mild range, we consider it a successful intervention, not a sign that our patient somehow doesn't actually have depression.

Kaladin also has a distinction in his symptoms: he's using the in-universe equivalent of CNS stimulants in the form of Stormlight.  The stuff doesn't banish his depression, but it induces something like a sub-manic state in certain symptoms (energy, concentration, need for sleep etc.)  This combined with the underlying sub-clinical depression results in him occasionally presenting what are symptomatically close to rapid-cycling Bipolar-2 mixed episodes (a combination of both hypomanic and depressive symptoms).  We would not however diagnose him as bipolar type because he never demonstrated any hypomanic symptoms without Stormlight usage, and in the one instance when his Stormlight was withheld he quickly declined into a classic depressive state.  I see similar symptom patterns in real life MDD patients in remission who are taking amphetamines to manage other clinical conditions such as adhd or sleep disorders.

[aemetha he/him]

I think you're missing my point. Kaladin's short episodes of depressed mood are normal responses to the circumstances he was in. You can't declare someone disordered because they had a normal response that is entirely reasonable for the circumstances they are in. The DSM-V criteria actually specifically excludes bereavement for a diagnosis of MDD because it is a normal response. Pretty much all of Kaladin's non-seasonal episodes can be related back to a bereavement of some description.

I accept if the author is attempting to depict depression, then that's what it should be thought of as. I also accept your explanation of recurrences of depressive disorders. I definitely accept the description of amphetamine users, because that is my specific field of study (dual diagnosis addiction) and that is consistent with what I've learned and observed. I even accept that seasonal affective disorder is currently classified as a sub-type of MDD, while I disagree with the appropriateness on the basis of it dictating different treatment approaches and therefore not a very valid diagnostic category, with diagnosis being primarily a predictor of appropriate treatment (I gave one critique of that, but there are dozens, nonetheless that's getting into semantics so I agree we shouldn't engage in any kind of study-waving). With that in mind, I will concede that the seasonal episodes may accurately be described as an example of major depressive disorder.

What I have trouble accepting is that a normal response should be included as a disorder. This is a huge criticism of the profession of psychiatry - that they can often find a way to classify anyone with some kind of mental disorder. My own training is that you need to look beyond specific behaviours and also at the context in which the behaviour is present. To be disordered that behaviour must be inconsistent with how the majority of people would respond in that context. Grief is normal, and an essential part of human psychology, it shouldn't be designated as something to be fixed, because to do so removes a massive component of social interaction. I think a person would actually need to have some kind of disorder to not experience the episodes that Kaladin did, outside of the seasonal pattern. The transience of the state of depression shows that his response is consistent with normal grief.

Maybe this is an issue of theoretical background influencing how we interpret his behaviour. Psychology emphasises the biopsychosocial model and psychiatry emphasises the biomedical model. Nonetheless, this isn't the place for that debate. I am happy to leave it at agreement on the seasonal aspects and disagreement on the other episodes if that is acceptable to you, or alternatively we can continue the debate elsewhere (there's a psychology thread I created for these types of discussions somewhere in this subforum) so as not to completely derail the thread if you like. To be clear though, I am absolutely not arguing that Kaladin doesn't demonstrate depressed behaviour, only whether his behaviour (outside the seasonal episodes) should be considered disordered. Anyway, I'm not trying to get the last word in, so feel free to respond here, and if you wish to continue the discussion after that we can do so outside this thread.

[Song she/her]

One of my favourite bits of this book was the emphasis on Bridge 4. Even though Kalladin only got cameos in these scenes, we get to see really interesting sides to him. The B4 folks look up to him but don't see him as perfect.  The "they saved me as much as I saved them" concept was really refreshing.  So even though we (I suspect dilberately) didn't have the sweep in and save the day Kal, we saw a richer side of him in this book.

[Korbin]

27 minutes ago, Song said:

One of my favourite bits of this book was the emphasis on Bridge 4. Even though Kalladin only got cameos in these scenes, we get to see really interesting sides to him. The B4 folks look up to him but don't see him as perfect.  The "they saved me as much as I saved them" concept was really refreshing.  So even though we (I suspect dilberately) didn't have the sweep in and save the day Kal, we saw a richer side of him in this book.

YES! I really loved bridge four in this! I think that adding the element of some of our favorite characters perspective was nice. But I do have to say my all time favorite Kaladin scene was in WoR when he jumped into the dueling pit with Adolin and faced all of the shard bearers.

[Furry-And-Lovable-Grover he/him]

Y'all are starting to sound like some Skybreakers here.

[aemetha he/him]

17 minutes ago, Jhardin said:

Y'all are starting to sound like some Skybreakers here.

Unfounded allegations such as this are a clear violation of sub section three paragraph two of the criminal justice code in some jurisdiction somewhere. We will of course be applying for a writ of execution. We will be in touch!