A Life with Schizophrenia
The movie “A Beautiful Mind” helps the audience to see and understand how is it to live with schizophrenia. According to Cockerham, “Schizophrenia is a disturbance in an individual’s mood, thinking, and behavior, characterized by a distorted sense of reality that includes delusions and hallucinations” (34). The main character in this movie is John Nash, an American mathematician who struggles his whole life with schizophrenia. Although, in the long run he learns how to control it in a way that does not cause any physical or emotional harm to himself or others. For graduate school, he decides to go to Princeton University, where he competes with other students on coming up with an “original idea.” An original idea
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Nash is a very lonely man. He does not like people, and he thinks people do not like him either. He considers himself as the “lone wolf” mainly because people do not like him. This is all on his mind, there are many people that appreciate his hard work and care about him. The movie does a great job on making the audience believe that certain things are happening, but in reality, they are only hallucinations that Nash is experiencing. He hallucinates things like working for the government as spy against the Russians, seeing and talking to Charles, his roommate from Princeton University and his niece, but none of this is real. There is one scene where Nash is going to drop an envelope with confidential information in it at the house of this man that he is working for, but a shooting begins. This is when the man that hired Nash tells him to get into the car. In Nash’s mind, the Russians are the ones who are shooting at him. After the imaginary shooting, he goes back to his house and locked himself up in a room. His wife starts to wonder why he is acting that way, but she never thinks that he has a mental illness, she just thinks he had a bad day. This is the definitive outburst phase. The movie makes this scene like it’s actually happening.
Towards the middle of the movie, he is taken to McArthur Psychiatric Hospital to get treatment for his mental illness. At the hospital, he tries to justify his behavior by telling his
In the movie A Beautiful Mind, which primarily takes place in the 1950s, John Nash exhibits signs of schizophrenia. He shows both positive and negative signs of the disorder. However, the movie does not portray all symptoms of schizophrenia accurately. Throughout Nash’s life-long battle with his illness, his family is dramatically affected. Overall, the movie implements a positive stigma of the disorder. While John Nash’s journey with his illness is not an entirely accurate depiction, the movie gives a positive light and awareness to schizophrenia.
I liked the fact that at the beginning of the movie you can’t really tell which is the delusions vs reality(you actually believe at first that Parcher and Charles are real people.) I also liked that you could see Nash at his lowest points in the movie when he gives in to the delusions and then see at the end that he has learned to overcome/ignore
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.
In the film, “A Beautiful Mind”, Russell Crowe plays the character of John Nash. John Nash is an awardee of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. During his university years, Nash puts extreme pressure upon himself as he tries to publish a work out of his original idea which allows him to develop a new concept of governing dynamics. Some years later, Nash is invited to the Pentagon to crack encrypted enemy telecommunication. Despite his success in this field, Nash believes that he can do greater things as he finds his regular duties at MIT unexciting and beneath his talent. Nash finds himself working under a mysterious supervisor, William Parcher, from the United States Department of Defense. He starts looking for pattern in newspapers and magazines in order to prevent a Soviet plot as he becomes increasingly obsessed about these patterns. Dr. Rosen suggests Alicia, John’s wife, that Nash has paranoid schizophrenia which implies that some individuals from his life were all part of his hallucinations which includes his roommate, Charles, and supervisor, William Parcher. However, John’s pride in his work and his desire to be great, prevent him from seeing the truth as he keeps working for Parcher. Despite facing such obstacles, Nash learns to accept that Parcher and other figures are all part of his hallucinations. I am the kind of person who sets my own personals goals and gets
Unfortunately his medication disrupts his relationship with his wife almost as much as his delusions did in the first place. For example, he couldn't respond to his wife in bed, he couldn't show affection to their child, and he couldn't do simple tasks around the house. He stops taking his medication and falls back into his paranoid delusions. Nash has a breakthrough and realizes that the people he is seeing are hallucinations when he realizes that none of them age.
In an interview, Nash said the voices in his head were constantly arguing and mocking him. The movie also depicts that Nash used insulin shock therapy and antipsychotic drugs as his treatment. In reality Nash refused the use of antipsychotic drugs. In my opinion the film directly compared to what has been discussed in class about schizophrenic disorders. The signs and symptoms in class were depicted what Nash was going through in the movie.
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
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
“A Beautiful mind” is a story based on the life of John Forbes Nash, who is a famous mathematician. Unfortunately, he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia that majorly affects his personal and social life. Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder in which the patient’s ability to function is impaired by severely distorted beliefs, perceptions, and thought processes (Hockenbury, 2010).
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.
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
This movie is based on the true story of the brilliant mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. He made remarkable advancements in the field of mathematics at a young age and had a very promising future. Unfortunately, John Nash had problems deciphering the difference between reality and hallucinations. He had a mental disorder known as Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a severe, complex illness that causes hallucinations and can affect a person’s ability to think clearly, manage feelings, make decisions, and relate to others.
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.
One aspect depicted throughout the film are the various mannerisms of schizophrenia. Nash 's character often displays agitated movements which are sometimes jerky in motion. Many times this is shown with head movements, hand gestures and even agitated pacing. This coincides with the National Institute of Mental Health 's (2009) description of the mannerisms associated with schizophrenia. Individuals with diagnosed schizophrenia can display a flat affect, with no emotion and diminished facial expressions, as well as a catatonic stupor becoming non-responsive to any type of stimulus (National Institute