Schizophrenia In A Beautiful Mind

In the film A Beautiful Mind, the protagonist gets diagnosed with the mental illness of Schizophrenia. From the beginning of the film, the protagonist John Nash appears to be a person who isolates himself from those around him. Since a child he was able to achieve incredible things. Throughout the film, we are introduced to several components of the disorder. Through John Nash’s experiences, we come to learn of his illness and how he is able to cope with it.

The onset of his schizophrenia does not appear until he is studying at Princeton University. John Nash becomes preoccupied with hallucinations of being part of a “government organization focusing on pinpointing and interpreting hidden codes placed in various newspaper articles by individual’s. He becomes distrustful and starts to have thoughts of persecution. This then causes him to get admitted into a mental health facility where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and administered psychotic medication and what seem to be adrenaline shocks.

John Nash showed delusions of grandeur, disorganized speech, poor stress-coping skills and a bizarre obsession/desire to create a new formula in order to achieve something in life. Nash also portrayed few emotional expressions in most social situations. As he got older, his symptoms continued to get worse. We learn from the film that Charles was his first hallucination, but that throughout the years, there were as many of three reoccurring hallucinated characters. At first the hallucinations stayed out of the way, mostly appearing when John was alone. However, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia after being admitted, he tried to ignore them. A Beautiful Mind allows us to see that due to him trying to ignore the hallucinations, the h...

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...t has been used for paranoid schizophrenia, in particular, is electro convulsive treatment it can also be stated that the film puts a lot of emphasis on the remission of Nash's schizophrenia without medication being the solution to schizophrenia, however.

A Beautiful Mind, discards the stereotype of individuals with Schizophrenia, it over dramatizes particular issues like being able to endure the illness without medication and presents false accounts of treatments used. It also creates false stereotypes towards psychiatrists and should not be thought of as a suitable apparatus for teaching psychology students about schizophrenia. Therefore, I do not believe that the film is a realistic portrayal of schizophrenia, putting greater emphasis on selling the film to audiences rather than showing the realistic properties present in an individual living with schizophrenia.