In the movie A Beautiful Mind, the description of schizophrenia is shown in many accurate ways. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) states that the symptoms of this disease are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or unorganized or catatonic behavior. People with schizophrenia are also socially withdrawn and awkward when in contact with other people. These traits of the sickness are shown in detail throughout the movie by way of the character John Nash’s struggle with the disease. Nash is a very intelligent professor but believes he is working with the government to foil a Soviet attack plot. Nash eventually goes onto win a Nobel Prize for one of his theories. The movie shows the effects of schizophrenia on not only one man, but also on the friends and family of the ill individual. Treatment is discussed but not to any great length due to him ignoring the doctor’s orders on medication. Overall the movie shows some very prevalent traits of the disease in great detail during certain parts of the film. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the authority on the diagnosis of mental diseases. It is a manual which provides all the symptoms and criteria listings for a certain type of disease. This manual list the symptoms of schizophrenia as characteristic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and catatonic behavior), occupational/social dysfunction (inability to maintain social abilities). Other areas are the duration of the disease (6 months or longer), Schizoaffective and mood disorder exclusion (rules out effects of other possible diseases). Also substance/ general medical substance exclusion (rules out effects based on drug effects), and finally ... ... middle of paper ... ...for Nash developing the disease. In real life however, schizophrenia is believed to be triggered by a combination of a person’s genetics, as well as the person’s environment. The onset of this disease is usually shown in males between 15 and 25. This is accurately shown in the movie by Nash’s symptoms becoming increasingly worse as he enters adulthood while at Princeton. This film shows schizophrenia as a challenging, yet, beatable disease. It shows the very hard aspects of it, but also the glory in the triumph over it. For the most part Russell Crowe delivered a pretty true portrayal of a schizophrenic’s life. Some parts were very “Hollywood”, while most aspects of the film were dead on with the nature of the sickness. A Beautiful Mind is a film that shows the very beautiful effects of unbridled love and support to someone who is afflicted by schizophrenia.
“I’m sure I am a schizophrenic, the problem is I cannot tell the difference between which one’s which, which one is the real me” (Nick Rhodes). In A Beautiful Mind, John Nash begins to have schizophrenic symptoms during his graduate years at Princeton University. Just like Rhodes, John is not able to recognize the problem for himself. Schizophrenic individuals deal with situations that they are not able to control. The stigma of schizophrenia categorizes individuals in a situation of no return, and at many times they are highly neglected and judged. Schizophrenia is considered a blemish of individual character as it rarely develops right after birth, but rather in later stages of life. In A Beautiful Mind, the stigma of schizophrenia portrayed by John Nash
People today are not completely educated about schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects millions from country to country. In today’s up and coming world, men and women over the age of eighteen that suffer from schizophrenia, has developed to 1.1% (“Schizophrenia” 1). Schizophrenia, on average, begins between the ages of sixteen and thirty, and men normally accumulate the disease before women. With the mental disorder, “positive” and negative symptoms occur. “Positive” symptoms include: hallucinations, messy speech, delusions, and catatonic behavior. Negative symptoms include: loss of interest and drive, roller coaster emotions, the difficulty to extract obvious hints, and come across as being in a mood that is difficult to understand, such as depression (Frankenburg 1).
Both the positive symptoms and the negative symptoms had been described in the book. The character of Nash shows all the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. The film demonstrates the type of therapy when Nash is admired to the hospital. Also, the textbooks mention the types of medication and the film states that these medications are crucial to reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia, and it also explained how certain treatments as well as medications have side effects. Overall, this film is a great resource for people who are interested on how the illness of schizophrenia starts and what triggers it. This film it was well covered the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. in terms of the aspects of his illness, and how he was able to manage to live the rest of his life and career with paranoid schizophrenia.
The first area that must be analyzed in the assessment of the accuracy of paranoid Schizophrenia as shown in A Beautiful Mind is the onset and early development of symptoms. The onset of the disease has many factors to be evaluated. First, the age of onset, for Nash, is presumed to be early twenties (ie when he would be in graduate school). This age is in line with the current understanding of Schizophrenia. The age of onset is usually between late teens to early adulthood (although it can start later) which would be exactly the time which the film depicted Nash as first experiencing symptoms. Although it still falls in line with the diagnostic criteria of Schizophrenia, it is important to note that the hallucinations that Nash experienced started occurring after he had graduated graduate school. The onset of symptoms also falls in line with a great increase in stress in his environment (joining graduate school and the quest for the "unifying theory"), w...
Schizophrenia, also known as the splitting of the mind, is a mental disorder characterized by disintegration of thought process and of emotional responsiveness. It manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid and bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it are accompanied by significant social and or occupational dysfunction. It is a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions and hallucinations, and accompanied by other emotional behavioral or intellectual disturbances. There are three main factors that are involved in the diagnosis of schizophrenia: 1-Delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder, grossly disorganized behavior or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms, blunted affect, alogia or avolition; 2-Social or occupational dysfunction; 3- Significant duration: continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months; according to the DSM IV. Delusions are a false belief based on faulty judgment about one’s environment. Hallucinations are experiencing something from any of the five senses that is not occurring in reality. Positive and negative (deficit) symptoms are important in diagnosing schizophrenia. Positive symptoms (PS) are not experienced, but are present. Delusions, disordered thoughts and speech, tactile, auditory, visual, olfactory, and gustatory hallucinations or manifestations of psychosis are all positive symptoms. Negative symptoms (NS) are deficits of normal emotional responses and thought processes that normally do not respond to medications. The patient experience a flat or blunted affect and emotion, poverty of speech (alogia), inability to expe...
Schizophrenia also known as split personality disorder is a chronic and severe mental illness involving auditory hallucinations, very disturbed moods or social problems, thoughts and behaviors (Laurie 143). The problem of thoughts associated with schizophrenia is described as psychosis. A person suffering from schizophrenia has the kind of thinking that is completely out of touch with the reality. A person may for instance could be hearing nonexistent voices or seeing images that are not there. For instance in the film, "A Beautiful Mind", the star character John Nash, experiences both visual and
A Beautiful Mind is a film that is based on the life of a famous mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash. In the film, John Nash is a known mathematical genius who was accepted to the university of Princeton. However, after being accepted to the university, Nash faced many challenges as he is unable to handle being social such being able to talk to the opposite sex in the proper manner nor attending class because of Nash's belief that nobody likes him, nor does he like people. In the movie, John Nash was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with schizophrenia because of the delusions he had and being unable to distinguish his imagination and reality. Symptoms for schizophrenia includes having difficulties in having social relationships, inability to distinguish from reality to imaginary, and able to have a clear thought process (Schizophrenia - PubMed Health).
Throughout this paper, we gathered information on schizophrenia to better understand it as a disease and a mental illness, as well as how it affects people in day to day life. We used a variety of different resources such as: The course textbook (The World of Psychology), the website given to us (mentalhealth.com) and the CMHA website, journal articles, and media sources, taking elements and different aspects A Beautiful Mind (2001), Patch Adams (1988), Shutter Island (2010) and Friday the 13th (1980). We researched the formal definition of the illness, finding the social and quality of life impacts. We analyzed different films, comparing different interpretations of schizophrenia in each. We realized that this illness is widely misunderstood
Initial studies on the role of neurotransmitters suggested that excess dopamine activity is related to the onset of schizophrenia. Research regarding dopamine is mainly related to the positive and disorganized symptoms of the disorder, which is specifically relevant to Nash’s case. Though he did portray negative symptoms in the form of asociality, his main symptoms, delusions, and hallucinations were positive, and so excess dopamine activity is an adequate explanation. Further confirmation is demonstrated when Nash is put on a regimen of antipsychotic medication that functions by blocking dopamine receptors and experiences a decline in his positive symptoms. Additional research also suggests that underactivity of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex may be the main cause of negative schizophrenic symptoms, which would explain the slight asociality that Nash did portray. Within the prefrontal cortex, low levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate also lead to an increase in dopamine action, causing the disorganized symptoms like the fidgety movements that Nash presented. In regards to brain structure, one of the main connections between schizophrenia and the brain is enlarged ventricles. This is particularly important in Nash’s case as enlarged ventricles are correlated with poor medication response which
John Nash character fits the criteria for being diagnosed as having schizophrenia because of the symptoms he showed in his behavior and personality. These symptoms included the disturbed perception he had in his thoughts, his environment and the people around him. He showed some inappropriate emotion towards his perception like his imaginary friend Charles he felt like Charles betrayed him when he was taking to the psychiatry hospital. His speech was also disorganized he did not how to reply questions or give a speech in organized manner. His thought was not logic he thought in a unorganized manner. The three negatives symptoms of schizophrenia John appeared to have are reduced social interaction he could not talk to anybody about what he was going through. He once described himself in the movie as a ‘’Lone wolf’’ he came to the conclusion that people did not like him this was why he was anti-social. He also showed the Alogia symptom he spoke less most of the time while interacting with people this was shown in the movie when his wife
The onset, as noted in the DSM-5 criteria is gradual. Nash began to experience aspects of schizophrenia during grad school and as time went by the condition became more and more serious. the delusions were more regular, more severe and more life encroaching. The disease affected Nash in a biological, psychological and social way which is made known throughout the book and the movie, “A beautiful mind”. The most important aspect of this disease in my opinion is acknowledging the fact that with perseverance, a person can live with it. They need the will and courage to distinguish reality from false realities created by the human brain. I truly appreciated the struggle and empathized with Nash throughout the book and throughout the movie. He continued to be a brilliant, nobel prize winning mathematician despite his
Nash showed much change in the way he was functioning through the movie. After treatment, it seemed like he had his disease under control, but he still had problems disbelieving in his hallucinations by still acting on them. For example, he still thought he was working for the government by helping them decode secrete codes in the newspapers. He tried to hide this from his wife by keeping all his work hidden in a shed. Eventually, Nash's life is seen as he returns to the college to teach and continues completing his mathematics work, while still seeing the delusions. This life is clearly far from normal. But for Nash, it also seems the best option.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that generally appears in late adolescence or early adulthood, however, it can emerge
They have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. They struggle with everyday emotions, relating to others, and managing their daily lives.” it is remarkable that the schizophrenic main character, John Nash, has the ability to surpass his mental disorder with determination and perseverance. Nash states, “I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them.
Schizophrenia is a mental disease that affects the way a person reacts and thinks in a situation. Usually people with schizophrenia appear to fade in and out of reality; seeming a bit “mad” (National Institutes of Health). They have the mindset that everyone is out to get them, or to hurt them. This disorder also lowers the chance at handling a job, or staying employed (Schizophrenia: MedlinePlus). A person with schizophrenia tends to have a hard time concentrating. They could be super attentive and alert at one moment, then the next they are clocked out for the day. Another characteristic of schizophrenia is not being able to cope or express emotions easily (Mental Health America). Even if this disease is quite rare compared to any others,