A Beautiful Mind The movie “A Beautiful Mind” directed by Ron Howard is based on the real story of mathematician John F. Nash Jr., played by Russell Crow. John Nash was a gifted young man from West Virginia that, while studying in Princeton, created his “game theory” also knows as “Nash equilibrium”, which was the break through in modern economics, and for which he got the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics later on in his life. Also except his extraordinary mind John Nash had a psychological disorder – Schizophrenia. “Schizophrenia is a group of disorders characterized by severely impaired cognitive processes, personality disintegration, affective disturbances, and social withdrawal.”# Schizophrenia is the disease of the brain itself …show more content…

Nash showing symptoms of paranoia too, which showed his reluctance to trust others, suspiciousness and hypersensitivity. Also after getting the treatment Nash was showing mostly negative symptoms. The negative symptoms included flat affect, where he did not show any emotions, and avolition, where he had no motivation, even when his son was crying while sitting on Nash’s knee, John still wasn’t motivated to anything until his wife came in.
In the movie, while giving presentation, John Nash is captured and sent to psychiatric facility. Because of his delusions he thought that he is capured by Soviets for interrogation, so he would not listen to the doctor. Finally his wife Alicia confronts him by retrieving never opened envelopes that he had left at “secret” mailbox. When Nash saw the evidence, he realized that this all secret operation was a hallucination, and he agrees to go through therapy. While John was at the institution, he was going through insulin shock therapy, “which is induced coma and convulsions by overdose of insulin which afterwards leads to recovery of mental functions.”# After he received full insulin shock therapy, John was released and prescribed antipsychotic medications, which reduce the positive symptoms, like hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thoughts, but have small effect on negative symptoms, such as social withdrawal and