Ron Howards, A Beautiful Mind Essay -- Mental Illness

In Ron Howards work, A well-favored Mind, depicts the real life account of Professor John Nash and his struggle with paranoiac Schizophrenia. The topic of mental illness has become popularized as of late, bad-temperedly in popular media ( lead, television). This focus on mental disorders has greatly improved sentiency of mental disorders, only if this media has become a double edged sword. The alike process that educates people (ie these films and shows) can also disseminate largely off-key or misleading information. In the film, both sides of this information distribution phenomena be expressed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the movie to accurately describe the occurrence of paranoid Schizophrenia one must look at the accuracy of the onset, symptoms, and the discussion given to Dr. Nash. The first gear area that must be analyzed in the assessment of the accuracy of paranoid Schizophrenia as shown in A Beautiful Mind is the onset and premature development of symptoms. Th e onset of the indisposition 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 fine-tune school). This age is in seam with the catamenia understanding of Schizophrenia. The age of onset is usually between late teens to early adulthood (although it can start later) which would be exactly the time which the film depicted Nash as first experiencing symptoms. Although it still falls in line with the diagnostic criteria of Schizophrenia, it is important to note that the hallucinations that Nash experienced started occurring after he had gradatory graduate school. The onset of symptoms also falls in line with a great increase in stress in his environment (joining graduate school and the quest for the unifying theory), w... ...on practice of medicine between his first and second hospitalizations, which is true. But, it also depicts him as being on new medication after he is released from the hospital the sec ond time. This is not true, Nash actually rejected taking any medication after his second hospitalization and has been managing his symptoms since. The producers matte up that this rejection of modern medicine would encourage more people to reject medication.To summarize, although the image of Nashs disorder differs on some points from clinical and practical reality, it does fairly 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 artistic freedom of a real account or real disorder.