Ron Howards, A Beautiful Mind Essay -- Mental Illness

In Ron Howards work, A Beautiful Mind, depicts the real life account of Professor John Nash and his exertion with paranoid Schizophrenia. The topic of mental illness has become popularized as of late, peculiarly in popular media (film, television). This focus on mental disorders has greatly meliorate awareness of mental disorders, but this media has become a double stabbing sword. The same process that educates people (ie these films and shows) can also disseminate mostly false or misleading information. In the film, both sides of this information distribution phenomena are expressed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the movie to accurately describe the situation of paranoid Schizophrenia one must look at the trueness of the plan of attack, symptoms, and the treatment given to Dr. Nash. The first area that must be examine in the assessment of the accuracy of paranoid Schizophrenia as sh stimulate in A Beautiful Mind is the onset and early development of symptoms. The onset of the disease has many factors to be evaluated. First, the age of onset, for Nash, is presumed to be early twenties (ie when he would be in graduate school). This age is in pull with the current understanding of Schizophrenia. The age of onset is usually amid late teens to early adulthood (although it can start later) which would be exactly the era which the film depicted Nash as first experiencing symptoms. Although it still falls in decline with the diagnostic criteria of Schizophrenia, it is important to note that the hallucinations that Nash experienced started occurring after he had graduated graduate school. The onset of symptoms also falls in line with a great increase in stress in his surroundings (joining graduate school and the quest for the unifying theory), w... ...on medication between his first and second hospitalisations, which is true. But, it also depicts him as being on natural medication after he is released from the hospital the second time. This is not true, Nash in reality spurned taking any medication after his second hospitalization and has been managing his symptoms since. The producers felt that this rejection of modern medicine would encourage more people to reject medication.To summarize, although the depiction of Nashs disorder differs on some points from clinical and practical reality, it does passably accurately describe the symptoms and difficulties that someone who suffers from paranoid Schizophrenia would suffer from. In this particular instance, Hollywood did not butcher a disorder for their own gain, but one must always tread lightly when allowing exquisite license of a real account or real disorder.