Schizophrenia In The Film: A Beautiful Mind

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.

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.

Majority of cases begin in adolescence and adulthood. The peak age range would be eighteen to thirty year olds. As far as we know it is very rare for a child to have schizophrenia. The age for schizophrenia to appear differs by gender. Women tend to be diagnosed in between twenty and twenty-four. There is a second rise in numbers for women. The second rise begins after the age of forty. Men tend to get it in their twenties. After the age of thirty-five the number of men who develop schizophrenia tends to drop, thus males more likely to have early onset compared to women. “Gender differences may be related to women having more mood disorder and anxiety diagnosis leading to milder forms of schizophrenia going undiagnosed,” (Butcher, 2014). Gender can play a big role when diagnosing schizophrenia.

The government has spent tens of billions of dollars each year in the direct treatment of, social services for, and lost productivity due to such patients. Usually schizophrenia develops during late adolescence or early adulthood between the age of fifteen and thirty. Earlier symptoms may develop rapidly in the beginning but slows down over months or years. There are two areas, positive and negative, in which schizophrenic symptoms are classified. Positive symptoms can be seen as those which cause the patient to actively do things, and these include delusions, hallucinations, mood changes such as excitement or depression, and acute thought disorder. Negative symptoms are those that come on insidiously and are characterized by what the patient fails to do, e.g. lack of volition, emotional flattening, and withdrawal from society so that there is inability to communicate or socialize. These symptoms are going to be discussed in detail on the next paragraph. Firstly, delusions are false beliefs that clearly appear untrue to other people, and are divided into three kinds: paranoid, grandiose and depressive. In paranoid delusions, the patients believe they are being watched or spied on by some group of people such as the police or FBI. They may also believe that aliens from outer space are controlling their mind. In grandiose delusions, patients believe that they are some special person, often with great powers such as the

Schizophrenia is a disorder of the brain that affects how a person feels, thinks, and how they observe the world around them. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality (nimh.nih.gov, 2016). The media used was a movie called Canvas, which the mother has schizophrenia. She continues to worsen over time until she gets help. The movie expresses her hallucinations and delusions, and how they affect her and her family life.

I think for the most part the movie did a good job portraying schizophrenia as it is in reality. Nash experienced delusions of grandeur that blurred the lines between reality and imagination, illuminating a powerful example of just how debilitating schizophrenia can be. Auditory hallucination is the most common symptom found in schizophrenia. The one’s experienced by Nash in the film were in-line with how the DSM specifies them to be. The film puts a large emphasis on the paranoia experienced by Nash. In the DSM-IV, paranoia was a specifier for a sub-category of schizophrenia, called paranoid schizophrenia. The new version of the DSM does not include paranoia as a specifier for schizophrenia, rather it is viewed as a comorbid mental disorder. One aspect I thought was overdone concerns the visual hallucinations. It was necessary for the entertainment value of the film, but is largely inaccurate in its attempt to represent the visual hallucinations experienced by individuals who have schizophrenia. Visual hallucinations are not common in schizophrenia, especially not to the degree the movie depicts, in which whole scenarios and events are vividly made up. I think it is a common misconception that visual hallucinations are a hallmark of schizophrenia. I think that the producers of this movie included

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.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-5 says that “Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, and other symptoms that cause social or occupational dysfunction. For a diagnosis, symptoms must have been present for six months and include at least one month of active symptoms” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In the last edition of the DSM it was only required that a person show one of the symptoms listed, but now in the revised addition the patient must show two of the symptoms listed above. The National Institute of Mental Health or NIMH breaks down the disorder in laments terms by describing it as “People with the disorder may hear voices other

Schizophrenia is a disease most often amongst older teenagers and adults. Children rarely have schizophrenia, but it is not impossible. There are three categories of symptoms of schizophrenia: positive, negative, and cognitive. Positive symptoms refer to psychotic behaviors not generally seen in healthy people. These

perceives, feels, and acts. Signs of schizophrenia generally begins between adolescence and middle age adulthood. According to Robins, & Regier(1991)

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).

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.

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.