The Narrow Schism between Disease and Beauty: Discovering the Mental Disorders and Intricacies of A Beautiful Mind

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“Schizophrenia” is a cacophonous word, crowded with awkward consonants and branded by a puzzling pronunciation. Similarly, the disease itself is marked by disorganized, discordant speech, thoughts, and actions. From its original Latin, schizophrenia translates to “split mind,” a term which fits well because individuals with schizophrenia “seem to have normal mental function in some areas but are markedly disturbed in others” (source). Commonly accompanying schizophrenia are jumbled thoughts, distorted perceptions, and inappropriate behaviors. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are “psychotic behaviors not seen in healthy people,” such as persistent delusions and hallucinations (source). In contrast, schizophrenia’s negative symptoms, like monotonous tonal quality and lack of emotion and movement, indicate the absence of normal appropriate behaviors. Depending on the presence and continuance of symptoms, schizophrenia can typically be classified into four different subtypes. Paranoid schizophrenia involves a “preoccupation with delusions and hallucinations,” often of persecution or grandeur; disorganized schizophrenia’s “predominant feature is disorganization of thought processes and emotions”; catatonic schizophrenia includes “excessive or purposeless movement”; and undifferentiated schizophrenia samples a variety of different schizophrenic symptoms (source). Characterized by all forms of schizophrenia is the schism it forges between the individual’s internal mind and the reality of the external world. Much like the distorted perceptions which it creates, schizophrenia’s long list of possible causes still remains much of an elusive labyrinth. Schizophrenia “afflicts 1 in 100 people,” typically striking “as young people are maturing into adulthood” (Myers 591)....

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...When he feared that his lack of emotion would harm his relationship with his wife and son, Nash secretly stopped taking his antipsychotic drugs. From that point forward, against his psychiatrist's wishes, Nash searched for normalcy without psychopharmacology (A Beautiful Mind). He gradually noticed the implausibility of the always youthful, hallucinatory Marcee. Once again, a separation formed in Nash's mind as part of him realized that the voices could not possibly be real, and another part of him still heard them so clearly. Ultimately, he developed the willpower to ignore his hallucinations while simultaneously hearing them. His mind remained split, but he stood firm on the side of reality.

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