Topic > Depiction of John Nash's schizophrenia in the film A Beautiful Mind

The film A Beautiful Mind focuses on a brilliant mathematician named John Nash, who appears to be a person with an abnormal character, is very antisocial and is not easily distracted , is very applied and does not like people due to his poor social skills. John works with tension and dedication to develop a game theory concept while he is a student at Princeton University. After so much sacrifice and dedication that Nash puts in day after day, he does his job adequately, but this affects his mental health as he constantly works under stress and gets agitated when things don't go as he expected. While working at a private research university and being a professor at Princeton, he is diagnosed with schizophrenic disorder, although his psychotic disorder managed to go unnoticed for years because "eccentricity" was common in his field. Nash suffers from constant hallucinations that he actually had an imaginary roommate during his college years. His hallucinations of working at the Pentagon have become an obsession and he imagines himself working for a government agent, discovering hidden messages in magazines and newspapers. Being a professor at the university, he began a relationship with one of his students, Alicia Larder, a physics student, with whom he married and had a son. When his mental state worsens, imagining that Russian spies were following him to capture him because of his work, he is sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, where he realizes that his imaginary friend and his work as a secret spy are not real. However, after hospitalization and taking medications caused him marital problems and an inability to care for his son, it forced him to go off the medications. His hallucinations then begin to return and he thinks he is working for the government, but with the help of his wife he manages to seek help and try to improve, which pushes him to return to Princeton to look for work. Because he now distinguishes between reality and his hallucinations, he has decided to live out his days ignoring what he thinks he sees. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At the beginning of the film, John's behaviors among his colleagues are noticeably different, as he isolates himself from them and does not engage in conversation. When he enters Princeton University he feels as if he is competing with other mathematicians so he pushes himself to finish his work for many hours in his room. Due to his economic situation it led him to be twice as motivated as others because in the film it is mentioned that he was a poor university student. I think the amount of stress he endured caused him to produce abnormalities in his brain that interfered with his thinking, perceptual processes and he had confusing thoughts. In other words, years of stress can lead to schizophrenia. As it is stated, “Study shows severe forms of abnormal behavior. Like schizophrenia and depression, they occur proportionately more often among poor and socially disadvantaged groups.” However, the movie did not mention whether John's parents suffered from schizophrenia, so I believe this disorder was developed based on the reason why John was stressed and always pressured himself in his work. In fact, in an article entitled “Variable causes of social dysfunction in schizophrenia: the interaction of neurocognitive, personal and intersubjective factors” by Jurij Bon it is stated that “The course of schizophrenia is far from following the same pattern in different individuals. The first psychotic episode can appear almost unexpectedly or, on the contrary, i.