A Beautiful Mind and Disability
Disability Expressed in A Beautiful Mind
Tracy Adams
Gateway Technical College
Disability Expressed in A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind is a good movie by Ron Howard, about a man that has lost his grip on what is real and what is fiction. This started when he was in graduate school and no one really noticed until his wife had him committed to the hospital. John Nash, the main character of the film portrayed by Russell Crowe, is a great mathematician that became a victim to paranoid schizophrenia. At first he does not notice the problems, and being that we are seeing everything from his prospective we do not notice them either. Only after he is admitted to the hospital by his wife do we see that some of the main people in his life are just products of his mind. As was said in the movie, “What must it be like to realize not that those you treasure and hold dear are not lost or dead but have never been? What kind of hell would that be?” This is a true tragedy that is common with paranoid schizophrenia. I guess that in reality John Nash is a man that truly exemplifies the statement that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. This is probably why his problems were not addressed for as long as they were, people overlooked them because they would lose the benefit of that genius if they were to try and fix the erratic behaviors that he showed. John Nash suffered from many of the classic symptoms of this illness. He was paranoid that people were after him, which was healthy in his classified work. He had different friends and co-workers who did not exist anywhere but in his own mind. He started showing progressive erratic behavior towards his friends and family. In the end, right before the hospital, the fantasy realm was what was real to him and the real world just the work of fiction. I agree with the movie that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. However, if he was forced to continue the
Tracy Adams
Gateway Technical College
Disability Expressed in A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind is a good movie by Ron Howard, about a man that has lost his grip on what is real and what is fiction. This started when he was in graduate school and no one really noticed until his wife had him committed to the hospital. John Nash, the main character of the film portrayed by Russell Crowe, is a great mathematician that became a victim to paranoid schizophrenia. At first he does not notice the problems, and being that we are seeing everything from his prospective we do not notice them either. Only after he is admitted to the hospital by his wife do we see that some of the main people in his life are just products of his mind. As was said in the movie, “What must it be like to realize not that those you treasure and hold dear are not lost or dead but have never been? What kind of hell would that be?” This is a true tragedy that is common with paranoid schizophrenia. I guess that in reality John Nash is a man that truly exemplifies the statement that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. This is probably why his problems were not addressed for as long as they were, people overlooked them because they would lose the benefit of that genius if they were to try and fix the erratic behaviors that he showed. John Nash suffered from many of the classic symptoms of this illness. He was paranoid that people were after him, which was healthy in his classified work. He had different friends and co-workers who did not exist anywhere but in his own mind. He started showing progressive erratic behavior towards his friends and family. In the end, right before the hospital, the fantasy realm was what was real to him and the real world just the work of fiction. I agree with the movie that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. However, if he was forced to continue the