Schizophrenia In A Beautiful Mind

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Schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind Imagine what it would feel like to find out that everything around you, the people you know, and all your memories you have shared with them, were not real. This is exactly what John Nash discovered in the movie A Beautiful Mind, after a psychiatrist informed him he has the rare mental disorder called schizophrenia. Although at the beginning of the movie, Nash's mental illness was unknown to views, he showed many symptoms of this condition. I will also speculate on the etiology or cause of his psychosis, the treatment provided to him, and his prognosis as well. The symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into three groups, which include positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and disorganized symptoms. Positive symptoms "include the disturbing experienced of delusions and hallucinations" (Durand & Barlow, 2010). In Nash's case, his positive symptoms included both delusions and hallucinations. After he discovered a key mathematical equation, he started believing that the government needed him to crack Soviet codes in a secret mission. He also saw hallucinations in the form of people and things that weren't really there. He saw an imaginary best friend who frequently followed him around with a little girl, and he saw FBI agents chasing him and shooting guns at him. To coincide with these people, he saw government facilities and offices in his personal office at work and in his backyard shed. Negative symptoms in contrast, "usually indicate the absence or insufficiency of normal behavior" and "include emotional and social withdrawal, apathy, and poverty of speech or thought" (Durand & Barlow, 2010). The one big negative symptom that was present for Nash in A Beautiful Mind was his social withdrawal. As a college student, he didn't have any friends and that didn't seem to bother him. He sat at his desk by the window most of
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