“ A Beautiful Mind ” is a film Directed by Ron Howard, characterizing the story of John Forbes Nash the brilliant mathematician who has Paranoid Schizophrenia. When the film commences, Nash is teaching at Princeton University where he is renowned for his intelligence. He is depicted as an arrogant and socially inept student of mathematics whose time is spent attempting to discover revolutionary mathematics equation. By the time the film is halfway, the audience discovers that half of the events that take place in the film are illusions within the “beautiful mind” of Nash. It is at that point that it is determined that Nash has Schizophrenia, a severe illness. A “split mind” is the definition of Schizophrenia because the sufferer exhibits a split personality from reality ("A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Russell Crowe & Jennifer Connelly", 2019).
Disorganized thinking perturbed perceptions coupled with inappropriate actions and emotions is how the disorder manifests itself. Nash is portrayed to experience hallucinations, delusions which are symptoms of Schizophrenia. The viewer is able to know that the character Nash is suffering from Schizophrenia because besides the above-outlined symptoms of the disorder, Nash has also created imaginary characters one being a roommate of his, Charles Hermann English literature student. Further, the age at which his disability sets in is within the typical age when those symptoms begin to manifest, the early ’30s ("A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Russell Crowe & Jennifer Connelly", 2019).
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Apart from the creation of imaginary character Charles, the disorder is shown to properly set in when Nash is conversing with fellow graduate students, but the vital cognitive symptoms are not shown until the major scenes of the movie. He is basically quiet, and when he speaks, he does so with a lot of emotions, a fact that can be linked to the disability. The peak of the disability is when he is delivering a speech regarding his current mathematical research when in the lecture room, he perceives men in suits and believes that they are Soviet spies in to capture him. This delusionary event makes him flee, and the supposed spies capture him but take him to a psychiatric hospital to get help with his disability. The disability progresses severely much to the extent of making him believe that he works for DoD, dealing with breaking a top-secret Soviet code under a non-existent agent called William patcher ("A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Russell Crowe & Jennifer Connelly", 2019).
Nash, the main character is received by the community as a person with multiple personalities without a quick realization that he is having trouble differentiating between imaginary and real things which is a characteristic of the disorder. This a mistake that the social world always makes when it comes to dealing with schizophrenic individuals. Majority of such individuals see hallucinations as opposed to hearing voices. Nash did not see the hallucinations which portray the struggles the character had to endure struggling with Schizophrenia.
After viewing the movie, my general thoughts about the movie are that the director successfully portrays the intricacies of Schizophrenia to the viewers. Nash’s suffering is a clear depiction about the struggle schizophrenic personalities go through which is enlightening. The use of supportive environment registered more positive outcomes when pursuing remission as opposed to medication, something that researchers and scientists have not realized. It is also clear that little was known about this disorder in the 1950s and 1960s. Overall, it is a great and educative movie, and a suitable example of what living with the disability can be.
Reference
A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Russell Crowe & Jennifer Connelly. (2019). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYOcF69dTak
