A Beautiful Mind

1190 Words5 Pages
A Beautiful Mind The movie portrays the life story of Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. His genius in mathematics was counterbalanced by his affliction with the diagnosis of schizophrenia. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, (DSM-IV-TR) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 299), schizophrenia is characterized by positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, illusions, disorganized speech and paranoia) and negative symptoms (deficit or loss of normal functions relating to degree of emotions, fluency and productivity of thought and speech and initiation of goal-directed behavior). It is characterized by a person’s perception of reality which can be very different from the way most other people perceive the same reality. It allows viewers to learn about the illness and its effect on people who have it, their families and their friends. This movie provides an excellent opportunity to learn about schizophrenia, a disease that impairs an individual’s perceptions, concentration, and social interaction and thus, making it quite disabling. The symptoms of schizophrenia that were identified in the movie were: antisocial behavior, hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and paranoia. The great thing about this movie is that is written and filmed from the perspective of a person with schizophrenia as well as the perspective of others. It presents not only what is observed about John through society’s reality; it also demonstrates what drives John internally through his unique reality. It shows how an action or behavior of a person with schizophrenia can appear to be bizarre to an observer but appear so appropriate to the person experiencing it. John Nash’s antisocial behavior was obvious from the very beginning of the movie where he
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