Running head: A BEAUTIFUL MIND 1
A Beautiful Mind:
A Case Study
A BEAUTIFUL MIND 2
Diagnostic Impression:
Axis I 295.30 Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type, Continuous
Axis II V71.09 No Diagnosis
Axis III None
Axis IV Psychosocial and Educational Stressors
Axis V GAF = 55 (highest level in past 30 years)
Case Study:
John Nash suffers from Paranoid Schizophrenia. He is a gifted mathematician who began graduate school at Princeton University in 1947. We will begin Mr. Nash’s history from this point in time, for it is here that his symptoms first began to emerge. During this time in his life he is in what is known as the prodromal phase of schizophrenia, which is a period before active
…show more content…
In 1953, Mr. Nash was summoned to the pentagon to help decipher intercepted Russian messages, and it was upon leaving that he first noticed a mysterious man by the name of William Parcher, who is actually another hallucination. Parcher later approaches Mr. Nash at night and takes him to what appears to be a code breaker lab set up in an old warehouse. It is here that he is asked if he will help the Department of Defense by deciphering codes in certain newspapers and periodicals, at which time a devise is implanted into his arm. However, this entire experience is nothing more than an elaborate delusion and hallucination.
Mr. Nash accepts this assignment, and gradually he becomes completely fixated on doing nothing except code extraction. Around this same time he is asked to dinner by one of his students, Alicia, whom he is almost immediately intrigued by. It is while on this date that his delusional content shifts. Up to this point, his delusions and hallucinations had, for the most part, played into his grandiosity, however, this night, a persecutory theme emerges, as he notices suspicious men watching him.
He continues to see Alicia, while at the same time remaining engrossed in his secret life of code breaking and paranoia. Mr. Nash eventually asks Alicia to marry him, and at the ceremony he sees Parcher parked across the street watching him. Not long after this, while making a package drop-off, a frantic Parcher, who informs him that they
The evidence of the cognitive symptoms, as with any disease, is more difficult to see externally in a person suffering from Schizophrenia. John Nash was not a very social person and I believe that this is attributed to the inability of expressing thoughts and feelings caused by the disease. His office in the movie looks somewhat like what I imagined the inside of his mind to look like; cluttered. Pictures on top of articles, on top of more pictures. There were papers hanging from the ceiling and string connecting pictures while forming patterns. One pattern I saw repeated a few times throughout the film was a spider- web image. This to me just shows how everything in his mind seemed as though it was connected in some way.
2.The most highly visible aspects of Nash’s condition are of course his elaborate delusions and hallucinations (creating friends and relationships that don’t in fact exist) and his paranoia (for example, his belief that the hospital is run by the Soviets). DSM-V lists negative symptoms--alogia, anhedonia and avolition--that we don’t see in the film. When Nash is medicated and flailing in his life--unable to focus on his work and unable to respond to his crying child--he asks his wife, “What do people do?” It’s then that we see the most mood disorder-related aspects: avolition, defined as a lack of will and self-direction, and anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure. Alogia may be indicated when Alicia says to Nash on their picnic date by the lake, “You don’t talk much, do you?” and Nash responds,
In addition to hallucinations and delusions, other symptoms were portrayed in the film. Nash was constantly suspicious of the people around him. This was a result of his belief that the Russians were after him. For example, when Nash was taken to the psychiatric hospital, he thought that Dr. Rosen was Russian and trying to stop him from doing his work. As a result, Nash resorted to violence in order to protect himself.
This hallucination of Ed Harris is the key factor in Nash's delusional thinking. He has delusions of being a secret government aide that is helping the U.S. find bombs throughout the country that were placed here by the
Nash's first hallucination is in his college dorm room when his drunken roommate Charles appears. Charles acts as a mentor to Nash by making him realize that work and studies are not the only things life has to offer. Throughout his life, Nash has been a "lone wolf", and Charles
“To some extent insanity is a form of conformity; people are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering. But it’s really not so simple…I think mental illness or madness can be an escape also” (qtd. in “John Forbes Nash”). To many “normal” people, the terms “insanity” or “madness” portray a negative connotation-- the unfortunate ones “suffer” from mental illness. However, brilliant mathematician and Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash, who has paranoid schizophrenia, cherishes his unique condition as a means of retreat from the brutalities of reality (“John Forbes Nash”). Since ancient times, people have observed the link between madness and creative genius. Indeed, research has proven that the two conditions of
John Nash is well above average in terms of intellectual functioning. He is diagnosed with schizophrenia. He first started exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia when he attended Princeton University. The symptoms that were observed were hallucinations and delusions. In Nash’s mind, he had a college roommate name Charles Herman. In addition, he stated that he met Herman’s niece named Marcee and a secret agent named William Parcher, whom he worked for at a secret location by breaking Russian codes. He developed persecutory delusions while working for William Parcher because he believe that Russians are trying to kill him for
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that affects many individuals around the world. It affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves. The focus on this paper will be on the film entitled A beautiful Mind. This film focuses on the life of John Nash, who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. This paper will include three parts. Part one will describe Mr. Nash’s diagnosis based on the DSM-5. Part two will include literature review explaining Mr. Nash’s diagnosis. Then, based on this literature review, I will develop a complete biopsychosocial to implement a treatment strategy to help Mr. Nash. Part three will describe how the film portrays the disorder that Mr. Nash is diagnosed with.
In the movie it seemed like he did not have a lack of social involvement with the outside world but once the viewer realized that the roommate and Parcher were not real then it all came together. All of Nash’s symptoms started when he began looking for his original idea to be published. The DSM5 says the reaction to stress causes individuals with schizophrenia to have increases in negative mood and behaviors. I believe the stress of trying to find something new pushed him over the edge and forced him to create a world that helped him cope with the pressure but in reality it created more work for him to do. Nash’s over all functions in everyday life were impaired due to his disorder. After going to the psychiatric hospital and beginning his medication he began to suffer from intellectual paralysis cause by the medication. His delusion might have gone away but his work and overall well-being suffered which caused him to stop taking the medication and have another psychic
John Nash, the main character, faces many challenges in his professional life as well as in his personal life. His friends who later become his colleagues think that he is just plain crazy. They also find him entertaining. However, they cannot resist looking down on him for his strange behavior, difficulties
The movie A Beautiful Mind is one that offers psychologists with a lot of fodder to think about and its storyline brings out various aspects of psychology that can be analyzed to bring a more conclusive close to this debate. The thesis statement of this essay is that psychological disorders need to be understood independently of various factors such as biological and environmental factors. This is because the world of psychology has always tried to attach the above factors to various psychological disorders but I strongly feel that psychological disorders need to be understood and analyzed independently so as a true and deeper understanding of these disorders comes to the fore. The movie A Beautiful Mind is about a genius mathematician Nash who has a psychological disorder, which is later diagnosed to be paranoid schizophrenia. The effects of this disorder are evident in the movie and the essay tries to see how the need to study psychological disorders independently could be helpful in helping various examples of cases such as that of John Forbes Nash.
In the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", the main character, John Nash, is a mathematician who suffers from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is actually the most chronic and disabling of the major mental illnesses and it distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, interprets reality and relates to others.
On June 13, 1928, the adventure of John Nash's life had begun. Nash excelled academically from a young age, he was able to skip a grade, and soon after was accepted into Princeton University. He was considered one of the best mathematicians of his day. In time Nash developed schizophrenia; talking about himself in third person, writing in cryptic formulas on Princeton's blackboards, and calling his old colleagues. Then he was prescribed anti-psychotic and made a slow recovery, until he became frightened of the possible side effects and stopped taking his medication. With all the pain he suffered, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and with unknown causes he began to recover and in 1994 John Nash was awarded one of the
According to the DMV-IV John Nash was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia because of certain criteria he showed, hallucinations and delusions. It is listed in the DMV-IV as 295.30 Paranoid Type-Schizophrenia (DSM-IV, 1994). Dr. Nash had a break from reality when he
A film that I think relates to this class is “A Beautiful Mind.” This movie follows John Nash who goes to graduate school at Princeton University on a prestigious math scholarship. Nash later goes on to work for the government and help with cracking encrypted enemy communications. Throughout this process he becomes hooked on finding the patterns and it begins infringing on his life and becomes worried he is being followed. Matters become worse when he witnesses a shooting between Soviet military and John Nash’s supervisor and he becomes even more paranoid. When John Nash was giving a lecture, he feels as if he is being pursued by foreign agents and needs to escape. The people he was running from was really Dr. Rosen and this caused him to fight