Paranoid Schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind

As portrayed in A Beautiful Mind, John Nash is clearly suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia, although a case could possibly be made for a secondary diagnosis of OCD. His condition is clearly displayed through a pattern of behavior and symptoms including: distorted perceptions of reality, social withdrawal, paranoia, hallucinations, self-inflicted harm and general irrational behavior. He imagines 3 specific individuals throughout the movie, who accompany him throughout the remainder of his life. He avoids social situations, and when faced with them, has a difficult time relating to others, such as approaching a woman in a bar and forwardly asking to skip the usual pleasantries and go straight to sex. Unsurprisingly, this approach fails to achieve his goal. Paranoia is also on display on several occasions, seeing people watching him, believing himself to be spied upon, seeing shadowy figures outside his home. He also believed that an object had been implanted into his arm, prompting him to tear his skin apart in order to remove the object, which was never there to begin with.
The typical treatment for this diagnosis would be Anti-Psychotic medications. Unfortunately for John, he is a mathematician and a teacher. The side effects of the medications are highly detrimental to his profession due to the cognitive impairment that they can cause. This slowed mental process combined with the inability to emotionally and physically relate to his wife, Alicia, would absolutely cause noncompliance in taking his medications. Another avenue of treatment would be cognitive therapy, which becomes apparent when John has his own breakthrough later in the movie by realizing that Marcy (one of his hallucinations) never ages, therefore she cannot be ...

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... I know you’re real, what can I do for you?” This kind of awareness is a very good indicator that, while his hallucinations have not gone away, he is aware and actively attempts to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
I can’t say that watching the movie has helped me understand the source material. I have seen the movie previously, so I had already entered the assignment with some knowledge about what I was about to see. I can say that having gone through the material in class, my understanding and appreciation of the movie itself has increased. I was able to watch it with a more discerning eye and actually found my enjoyment to be heightened. I understood the insulin treatment scene better after having been through the class material, and I was able to notice things that had escaped me in previous viewings. Overall I have enjoyed both sides of this assignment.