Schizophrenia In A Beautiful Mind

Although some people with schizophrenia can live seemingly normal lives, the movie accurately displays the overwhelming nature of schizophrenia for a person who is not only homeless and off medication but has PTSD.

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.

     In the film “ A Beautiful Mind” John Nash experiences a few different positive symptoms. The first of these positive symptoms are seen through the hallucinations John has of having a room -mate while at Princeton. This room- mate continues to stay “in contact” with John through out his adult life and later this room- mate’s niece enters Johns mind as another coinciding hallucination. Nash’s other hallucination is Ed Harris, who plays a government agent that seeks out Nash’s intelligence in the field of code- breaking.

1. The psychological disorder portrayed in character of John Nash in the film A Beautiful Mind is schizophrenia. The most prominent symptoms were hallucinations, grandiose delusions, paranoia, a persecutory complex. Beginning with DSM-V, two or more symptoms from the list of schizophrenic criteria must be present for at least six months and active for at least one month. John Nash certainly qualifies for another DSM-V criterion of diagnosis, social/occupational dysfunction, due to his apparent abandonment of relevant mathematical work in favor of conspiracy analysis/obsession. Nash is given the official diagnosis of schizophrenia during his admission to the mental hospital.

A Beautiful Mind, is a movie that was produced in the year 2002 by Universal Pictures. This film is about a man named John Nash who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, paranoid type. Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder with key features including delusions, hallucinations, difficulty concentrating, and other negative symptoms (Parekh, 2017). Paranoid schizophrenia specifically, is “characterized mainly by the presence of delusions of persecution or grandeur” (Sadock and Sadock, 2005). The typical age for the onset of schizophrenia is in late adolescence or early adulthood, and is seen in men and women equally (Sadock and Sadock, 2005).

The movie, A Beautiful Mind was inspired by a novel about John Nash Jr. that shared the same name. John Nash Jr. was a famous mathematician who taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, he quickly gained recognition in the field of mathematics where he won a Nobel Prize in economics, as well as articulating a myriad of mathematical proofs and theories. Nash had been experiencing delusions and auditory hallucinations that led him to believe he was working for the pentagon to identify undercover-Soviet communication in the media. After his wife started noticing erratic behavior she forced him to go to a psychiatric hospital. His trip to the psychiatric hospital ended with him having

In the film " A Beautiful Mind" John Nash experiences a few different positive symptoms. The first of these positive symptoms are seen through the hallucinations John has of having a room -mate while at Princeton. This room- mate continues to stay "in contact" with John through out his adult life and later this room- mate's niece enters Johns mind as another coinciding hallucination. Nash's other hallucination is Ed Harris, who plays a government agent that seeks out Nash's intelligence in the field of code- breaking.

A Beautiful Mind illustrates many of the topics relating to psychological disorders. The main character of the film, John Nash, is a brilliant mathematician who suffers from symptoms of Schizophrenia. His symptoms include paranoid delusions, grandiosity, and disturbed perceptions. The disease disrupts his social relationships, his studies, and his work. The more stressful his life becomes the more his mind is not able to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

My group chose to view the movie, A Beautiful Mind, which focused on the difficulties experienced by schizophrenic patients. By viewing a movie, we would have a visual experience of how schizophrenic patients are. In our current psychology pharmacotherapy class, we have learned about the positive, cognitive, and negative symptoms of schizophrenia; however, the symptoms are more abstract and harder to understand unless exposed. The positive symptoms include spontaneous behaviors, hallucinations, hearing voices, etc; cognitive symptoms include impaired ability to focus or maintain memory, while negative symptoms include inexpressive facials, declined speech, lower social abilities, and lack of interest in pleasure or activities. I have never seen or heard this movie before but I had an eye-opening experience with it.

The movie A Beautiful Mind is a movie about a brilliant man, with Schizophrenia/Psychosis. Schizophrenia “is a serious disorder which affects how a person thinks, feels and acts. Someone with schizophrenia may have difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary; may be unresponsive or withdrawn; and may have difficulty expressing normal emotions in social situations.” (http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/schizophrenia) Psychosis “is characterized by an impaired relationship with reality. And it is a symptom of serious mental disorders. People who are psychotic may have either hallucinations or delusions.” (https://www.healthline.com/health/psychosis) In the movie A Beautiful Mind our main character played by Russell Crowe experiences

The film “A Beautiful Mind” is about the life of Nobel prize winner John Nash Jr who suffered with schizophrenia. The movie starts as Nash has entered graduate school at Princeton, he was a mathematical genius who made a discovery early I his career of an original idea that helped him earn international acclaim. The socially awkward genius soon found himself on a painful journey of self-discovery. John Nash made up a life that was not real, his friends and secrete job were also not real. He could not distinguish between what was real, imaginary and made up in his head. His diagnosis of schizophrenia interfered with his everyday life and overall caused him to break until he decided to ignore what would forever haunt him.

“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).

The movie, "A Beautiful Mind", John Nash, who is played by Russell Crowe, is a true story about a mathematician whose life is horrific because of his disease, schizophrenia. He was an egocentric man who studied Mathematics in Princeton University. During the whole time that he studied in Princeton, he was trying to come up with his own original idea. He felt that by only

The movie Beautiful Mind is about Dr. John Nash who is a mathematical genius and a natural code breaker, at least in his own mind. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia which is a psychological disorder. According to Baird (2011), paranoid schizophrenia is when a person has “delusions of grandeur and persecution often accompanied by hallucinations” (p. 273). The person has a split from real life circumstances, where their new reality becomes actual fact to them.

Maintaining accuracy while producing a biographical film is a difficult undertaking. It requires complex research and genuine understanding of the person in order to accurately represent them on screen. In 2001, film makers attempted to translate to screen the life of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (Gazer & Howard). John Nash, who is a notable figure in the world of academia and mathematics, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his game theory (Nash, 1994). Nash is also widely known for his long-term struggle with mental illness and was diagnosed with schizophrenia during his mid-thirties (Samels & MacLowry, 2002). In order to examine the accuracy of this portrayal it is necessary to examine the aspects of schizophrenia displayed in the film such as the mannerisms, signs and symptoms, and forms of treatment; while comparing them to the actual realities of this disorder.