The Movie "A Beautiful "

A Beautiful Mind This paper discusses the movie “A Beautiful Mind” while it compares the movie with the true life happenings of a Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, who had suffered from schizophrenia. In the movie, “A Beautiful Mind,” John Nash displays classic positive symptoms of a schizophrenic. This movie does a great job in portraying the personality and daily suffering of someone who is affected by the disease, although it does not give a completely historically accurate account. In the film, John Nash would fall into the category of a paranoid schizophrenic, portraying all the symptoms that are typical for this illness. According to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), the definition of a paranoid schizophrenic is the following: “The essential feature of the Paranoid Type of Schizophrenia is the presence of prominent delusions or auditory hallucinations in the context of a relative preservation of cognitive functioning and affect.” These are accurate to what is shown in the movie. It goes on to say that “Delusions are typically persecutory or grandiose, or both, but delusions with other themes (i.e., jealousy or religiosity) may also occur. The delusions may be multiple, but are usually organized around a coherent theme. Hallucinations are also typically related to the content of the delusional theme.” His symptoms are also primarily positive and according to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), a positive schizophrenic can be described as the following: “an access or distortion of normal functions, such as, thinking and ideas (delusions), perception and sensations (hallucinations and illusions) and language and communication (disorganized or bizarre speech).” What led me to believe that this is an accurate diagnosis for john Nash is that he fits the criteria needed, to be diagnosed as schizophrenic, perfectly. All of his symptoms reveal that he is indeed a paranoid schizophrenic showing positive symptoms. For example, Nash suffers from delusions of persecution, believing