Paranoid Schizophrenia In a Beautiful Mind Essay

A Beautiful Mind

The following paper will address the state of the psychological disorder of John Nash, prominent mathematician and Nobel Prize Winner, in the time before, during, and after his treatment at McLean Mental Health Hospital, as portrayed in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. Diagnoses, analysis, and suggestions for treatment will be based on the text “Introduction to Psychology, 8th ed.”

John Nash is a remarkable historical figure: A flamingly brilliant mathematician plagued with a deadly disease of the mind; Paranoid Schizophrenia. The recent movie about John’s life addresses three main areas of his condition. Nash’s personal development; the ongoing character of his hallucinations; and his decreased or adversely affected brain function as a result of both psychosis and medication. These three topics allow us to investigate, in turn, the development of Nash’s disorder, the classification of his disorder, and the option of treatment for his disorder. The movie begins with Nash attending Princeton.

At Princeton, Nash is portrayed as socially akward and shy; Insightful, but tremendously lacking in tact and typical social inhibitions. The text notes that the disease develops slowly over months, or even years, and it is very likely that by the opening of the movie John Nash was already a well-developed Schizophrenic. Nash was exhibiting all the internal and non-diagnosable traits of the disorder, including: disordered thoughts and social withdraw and isolation. He was most likely genetically prone to the disorder, and the stress of attending grad school on a fellowship at Princeton served as the environmental stressor to trigger the onset of delusion.

Although the text states that paranoid delusions and hallucinations or almost always auditory, the movie portrays Nash as subject to purely visible to of Hallucinations (most likely for dramatic effect). At any rate, Nash’s first hallucination is his “roommate”, Charles, a sort of antithesis to...