A Beautiful Mind and Schizophrenia

What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and poor emotional responsiveness.

The 5 symptoms of Schizophrenia

1.) Delusions & Disturbances of Thought: Lack of awareness of basic realities in life and delusions.

2.) Hallucinations & Disturbances of Perception: Changes in how the body feels or feelings of depersonalization from the body. Also hallucinations( hearing voices speak to you).

3.) Disturbances in Emotional Expression: Lack of expressions or inappropriate emotional responses.

4.) Disturbances in Speech: Abnormal speech patterns. 5.) Disorganized or Catatonic Behavior: Severe rigidness of posture that may

be maintained for hours.

For schizophrenia to be present, at least two of the symptoms must be present in the patient.

Types of Schizophrenia

Disorganized Schizophrenia: Disorganized thoughts and behavioral patterns; sudden mood swings and hallucinations.

Catatonic Schizophrenia: May range from immobility to wild excitement and agitation.

Paranoid Schizophrenia: Well-organized thoughts and hallucinations.

Undifferentiated Schizophrenia: Does not hold specific symptoms or patterns of disorganized, catatonic, and paranoid schizophrenia.

A Beautiful Mind

A Beautiful Mind is a movie that shows the story of a mathematician, John Nash. John Nash is given a scholarship to Princeton University where he hopes to develop a break-through idea. His idea earns him a spot to teach a class. In the class he meets Alicia Larde who asks him out on a date and they fall in love. Where he teaches he meets a government agent named, William Parcher, who signs him up on some very top-secret cases for his code breaking skills. He keeps all the information from the cases from everyone and as the severity of the cases progresses, John Nash struggles with a sense of paranoia and schizophrenia.

More about A Beautiful Mind

Throughout the movie John Nash meets his “roommate”, Charles Herman, and has many conversations with him. John Nash never had a roommate, it was all hallucinated. Nash also develops paranoia, thinking people are watching him and trying to get to him.

Accurate Depiction of Schizophrenia

Johns Hallucination of the spy leader Verdict: This is true, there was a scene in this

movie where John was trying to find the serial number that he thought was in his arm, however it wasn’t actually there.

Accurate Depiction of Schizophrenia

Pushing his wife down to save her? Verdict: This is true, there was a part in the

movie where John pushes down his wife and son because he thought that he was saving them from Parcher, who was only just his hallucinations.

Connections between schizophrenia and A Beautiful Mind.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia:

Schizophrenia victims usually have hallucinations and hear voices talking to them.

Schizophrenic victims also begin to become paranoid .

John Nash’s behavior as proof:

• Nash hallucinates having a roommate, and talks to him all the time.

• Nash also begins to become paranoid people are watching him, etc.

Personal Connection

I remember watching this movie in Psychology when I was taking it in high school, and I thought that it was interesting. I knew someone that worked in a home that took care of people that had schizophrenia and I always remember how they would react if they did not have their medications such as some of the things that Nash went through when he didn’t take his medications. and so I wanted to do it on Schizophrenia.

Sources

Lecture notes for information about schizophrenia.

A Beautiful Mind movie https://www.wikipedia.org/ For the medications and little more information

about schizophrenia.