Movie About Mental Illness: A Beautiful Mind (2001) Q1. Who is the character you are focused on? Briefly summarize the plot.
The film A Beautiful Mind (2001) is about the mathematician John Nash, who developed the revolutionary theory of game theory. Nash suffered a schizophrenia breakdown shortly after he conducted his historic work, and eventually recovered later in life to the point he was able to receive the Nobel Prize he was rewarded for his contribution to economics.
Q2. What specific symptoms did the character experience in the movie? What diagnosis would you give them?
Nash, even before he became symptomatic, was eccentric and withdrawn. He began to hallucinate and experience paranoid delusions.
Q3. Nature or Nurture: Was the character’s mental illness a result of biological or environmental influences? Explain.
The film presents schizophrenia as an organic illness. There is no evident trigger event that causes the schizophrenia, which is commensurate with how schizophrenia is understood…...

Beautiful Mind
Paranoid Schizophrenia

Diagnosis and Supporting Evidence

A Beautiful Mind is a film that characterizes the story of a brilliant mathematician named John Forbes Nah Jr. He suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and the story is based on the real events of his life and his struggle with the disease. At the start of the film Nash is a mathematics graduate student in Princeton University, well-known for his brilliance. Although arrogant, he is socially-inept and spends most of his time making efforts to discover some new innovative equation in mathematics. As the film progresses, about half way, Nash begins developing signs of schizophrenia as the audience sees half of the situations and places were actually only illusions. One of Nash's first imaginary characters that he experiences is Charles Herman, his roommate, who is a student of Literature at the university.

Schizophrenia has been identified as split mind and refers to a split from…...

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References

Noll, R. (2007). The encyclopedia of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. New York: Facts on File.

Royal, B. (2015). Schizophrenia: Nutrition and Alternative Treatment Approaches.Schizophrenia Bulletin.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbu193 

Sachse, M., Schlitt, S., Hainz, D., Ciaramidaro, A., Walter, H., & Poustka, F. et al. (2014). Facial emotion recognition in paranoid schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder. Schizophrenia Research, 159(2-3), 509-514.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2014.08.030 

Shedler, J., Beck, A., Fonagy, P., Gabbard, G., Gunderson, J., & Kernberg, O. et al. (2010). Personality Disorders in DSM-5. American Journal Of Psychiatry,167(9), 1026-1028.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.10050746

Disorders
A Beautiful Mind

The subject that will be of focus for this paper will be the case of John Forbes Nash, Jr., the real life man whose life directly inspired the film A Beautiful Mind. (2001) The protagonist is played by actor Russell Crowe. The film is classified as a "biopic," short for a biographical picture/film. Crowe as John is an extremely interesting case from start to finish because of the intensity of is paranoid schizophrenia, and because of his intellectual & emotional journeys over the course of his life. According to public records and accounts of family and colleagues, John exhibited exceptional intelligence earlier on his life as well as symptoms of psychological or emotional disturbance at a very young age. John's passion was for mathematics, and not for normative, healthy social interaction with peers and family. His home life was moderately stable, but the marital issues his parents experienced…...

Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard [...] John ash's personal adaptation to his life. What human needs did he have difficulty in satisfying? How did his personal solutions to his problems explain both his genius and mental illness? Describe his role as a scientist and moral philosopher. John ash's extraordinary life surmounted odds that many would find insurmountable. This is a testament to both his mental illness and the genius of his capacities.
JOH ASH AD HIS ADAPTATIO

John ash's mind could be nothing other than "beautiful" for him to survive and thrive in his tortured interior environment, while continuing his scientific and academic duties. It is clear from the beginning of the film ash is not your "normal" student -- his mind simply works differently. He sees things completely in his own way, from going to class, to problems written on the windows of his room, and it is not…...

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Nash always had difficulty in social situations, he was ill at ease and gauche with real people, and perhaps that is why he had to invent his closest friends in his mind. His basic social needs went unmet, and so they were "solved" in his mind. With imaginary friends, he could be himself. He could also devote all, or nearly all, his time to his problem solving, rather than wasting time with social obligations that meant nothing to him. It was not until he met and married that he really had to continually interact socially, and that is when his mind rebelled, and created problems. He solved them scientifically, as he solved all the important problems that faced him in his teaching, and his life.

It is both in spite of and because of his mind that Nash won the Nobel Prize in 1994, and perhaps he would not have had the ability to see things so clearly, and solve his scientific problems if his mind had not been what it was. Scientifically, it was brilliant, truly a "beautiful mind." Socially and morally, it made no sense; it was a sick mind that could not reach out to others, only inside itself for comfort.

In conclusion, a mind that is confused is the only kind of mind that could see people who are not there, and then ignore them. A mind that is full of brilliance is the only kind of mind that could see people who are not there, and solve the problems so it can get on with life and what is truly important. John Nash has such a mind -- a beautiful mind. It is not always the most socially correct and lucid mind, but it is a mind that can solve problems rationally and scientifically -- allowing survival and even growth. John Nash is a unique individual, who managed to solve the problem of his own life, and make it into a powerful and rational equation. Part scientist, part philosopher, part madman, and part shining star, Nash and his mind certainly deserve a place in history, a beautiful place for a beautiful mind.

Beautiful Mind
Ron Howard's 2001 film A Beautiful Mind caused as much controversy over its treatment of mental illness as it did over its winning the Academy Award for best picture. Based on Sylvia Nassar's book of the same name, A Beautiful Mind chronicles the life of a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia, one of the most little-understood mental diseases. While the film may not have deserved the overwhelming cinematic accolades it received, it is nevertheless a touching and sensitive, as well as poignantly realistic portrayal of mental illness. A well-respected Princeton-educated mathematician at the head of his field, John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) is no ordinary man to begin with. His theories arise in his "beautiful mind" like a musician's composition would, and like many brilliant individuals, Nash would have been eccentric with or without the accompaniment of schizophrenic delusions and paranoia. However, when he begins…...

People who do not understand mental illness will see this film in a new light, because it not only shows how Nash reacts to his own illness, but how others, from employers to family and friends react. Some of the reactions indicate fear, some loathing, and some just bewilderment and a sense of unreality and hopelessness. Some of the reactions are also based on some of the stereotypes of schizophrenia, such as the disease is a multiple-personality disorder, and it is not treatable. It also breaks apart the myth that schizophrenics are violent. Some can be, but many are not, and this film shows that Nash may have had some bizarre behaviors, but he was not violent or hurtful to his family. Of course, his family suffered, and the film shows this, but they did not suffer physical abuse, really it was more mental abuse and stress and strain…...

Beautiful Mind by Silvia Nasar: The Real Story Of Schizophrenia
For anyone who has seen the film A Beautiful Mind John Nash comes across as a man troubled by schizophrenia, yet able to achieve success in his life. hile his illness does cause him significant problems, he is still able to achieve greatness via his game theory, to manage a long-lasting relationship where his wife loves him unconditionally, to achieve social acceptance where his colleagues accept his condition, and to receive the ultimate career achievement in winning the Nobel prize. The film even shows Nash succeeding over his schizophrenia and become able to control it and cure himself. This depiction presents Nash's story as one full of positives where his struggle with schizophrenia and his life is seen in a romantic light. To see the real truth of schizophrenia, it is better to read Sylvia Nasar's biography of Nash titled A…...

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Works Cited

Herbert, R. "Drama in four acts: 'Beautiful Mind' author follows tragedy." The Boston Herald January 18, 2002: 14-15.

Nasar, S. A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Nash, J. The Essential John Nash. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Seiler, A. "Beautiful' movie skips ugly truths." Chicago Sun-Times January 26, 2002: 71.

Beautiful Mind" -- a Film
John Forbes Nash, Jr., an American Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, is such a notable individual that he is the subject of a book, a PBS documentary and a film. The film A Beautiful Mind (Crowe, et al. 2006) eliminates aspects of Nash's life and rewrites other aspects revealed in the book and documentary, possibly to make Nash a more sympathetic character for the audience. However, the film remains true to a consistent theme: in an individual's quest for satisfaction through self-fulfillment, the abnormal can also be the extraordinary.

The book and PBS documentary tell John Forbes Nash, Jr.'s story "from the outside looking in," immediately noting his abnormality in that he is a paranoid schizophrenic. The film takes a different approach, "from the inside looking out," so we experience the world as Nash experiences it and do not realize until half-way through the film that he is…...

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Works Cited

A Beautiful Mind. Directed by Ron Howard. Performed by Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris and Paul Bettany. 2006.

eautiful Mind
The movie brought the reality of schizophrenia closer to personal experience, not only because the film is adapted from the true story of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a Mathematics genius. It is also because the sight-and-sound properties of the cinema have that distinct capability of connecting the audience to the innermost chamber of the characters' personalities and vicariously revealing their frank thoughts and feelings. One could almost feel and think what John Jr. did as he struggled against the disorder.

The movie also tells us that being exemplary or being on top can take its toll. The rest of us who belong to "normal" levels may admire geniuses, but have no idea how excruciating it actually is to be different. eing different is not necessarily being better or happier, just because the world needs hard and accurate thinkers like John Jr. In order to continue developing and coping with…...

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Bibliography

Gale Research. Psychosis. Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, 1999

Gale Group. Psychological Disorder. Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2001

Quinet, Linda and Peter Weiden. A Beautiful Mind. NAMI-NYC Metro, USA

In one way, it can seem that Nash has low communication competence. For example, he does not have good relationships with his classmates, his workmates, or his students. However, there are various signs that this is related more to a lack of social skills than an inability to communicate. This is seen towards the end of the film where Nash is seen tutoring and teaching students. In these interactions, it is seen that Nash is an effective communicator. At the same time, Nash can seem impatient and also seems to behave in unexpected ways. Again though, this is related to Nash's inability to understand social expectations and act based on these expectations. In Nash's mind, it appears that he considers his only focus as being able to explain and teach mathematics, with no regard either for personal relationships or for social standards. Nash is shown tutoring students and it…...

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Works Cited

Beautiful Mind. Dir. Ron Howard. Universal Pictures, 2001.

He also has hallucinations about being followed by a federal agent, in keeping with his academic world where the government seeks on the one hand to employ mathematicians and scientists and on the other hand mistrusts them. Many of the encounters he has in his mind with this agent and others have the aura of a detective movie, showing that Nash is replaying films he has seen and that these serve as the inspiration for his visions. In a way, that serves as another pattern in his mind, linking what he saw in the theater with what he believes is happening to him. Nothing comes out of whole cloth but always comes from experience and is then reformed in a form it did not have in reality.
In this way, the film shows the viewer the kind of world experienced by the schizophrenic and why this world is disorienting and…...

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Works Cited

Howard, Ron. A Beautiful Mind. Universal Pictures, 2001.

Scott, a.O. "From Math to Madness, and Back." The New York Times (21 Dec 2001). May 5, 2008.  http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE7D6103EF932A15751C1A9679C8B63 .

Which aspects of the film were realistic and which were not and how could it have been better?

The suffering caused by Nash's illness to his wife are certainly realistic, as is the preoccupation with government survellience typical of many paranoid delusions. Even Nash's recovery, while atypical of the disorder, is based in real life. However, the relatively coherent nature of his mental world gives the illness a veracity for the viewer, which is seldom true of the way other people perceive paranoid schizophrenic's delusions in real life -- although the coherent characters of the film react in a horrified, realistic fashion.

Were any causal factors for the chacters disorder suggested?

There is no

5.)What types of treatment given, if any? Give examples. Do you think this form is typical for individuals with this disorder? Why/why not?

6.)What impact did the person's disorder have on others in his life? Realistically portrayed? Why/why not?...

eautiful Mind
This is a beautiful and gripping biographical work on John Nash, the mathematical genius, by Sylvia Nasar. Nasar's work is an engaging depiction of the meteoric rise of the prodigious Nash into the mathematical fraternity and the ironical affliction that he had to face, battling against the degenerative schizophrenia. Nasar discusses all the trouble that Nash had to undergo being inflicted by schizophrenia, which totally ruined his personality and paralyzed the blossoming of his innate precocity. The biography of Nash, which culminates in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in economics (1994) for his work on game theory, which incidentally was done some 40 years ago, suggests the inevitability of recognition, a triumph of the genius. The splendor of Genius can never fade though it is submerged under the cloud of circumstances.

I think that 'Renaissance' would be an apt tag for the book as it is not just…...

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Bibliography

Interview with Sylvia Nasar: Maximum Russell Crowe www.maximumcrowe.com/beautifulmind/sylvianasar.html

" (assar, p.15) He had a wife and a young child by this time, and seemed to have a relatively stable if eccentric family and professional life. Then, the man, after a bout of mania became "frozen in a dreamlike state." (assar, p.19)
ash was treated for his dissociated states into paranoid schizophrenia with insulin therapy, drugs, shock therapy, and talk therapy, none of which seemed to help his condition. His wife at first stood by him, and then divorced him. The great mathematical genius that enabled ash to see patterns in behavior and numbers, and to construct predictable equations about human decision-making had dissolved into ravings about government agents, and nonsensical theorems.

After the failure of modern psychiatry and medicine to treat the mathematician, ash became "a phantom who haunted Princeton in the 1970s and 80s, scribbling on the blackboards and studying religious texts." (assar, p.19) Yet, while ash wandered aimlessly…...

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Nash was treated for his dissociated states into paranoid schizophrenia with insulin therapy, drugs, shock therapy, and talk therapy, none of which seemed to help his condition. His wife at first stood by him, and then divorced him. The great mathematical genius that enabled Nash to see patterns in behavior and numbers, and to construct predictable equations about human decision-making had dissolved into ravings about government agents, and nonsensical theorems.

After the failure of modern psychiatry and medicine to treat the mathematician, Nash became "a phantom who haunted Princeton in the 1970s and 80s, scribbling on the blackboards and studying religious texts." (Nassar, p.19) Yet, while Nash wandered aimlessly on the campus, this mathematician's former name, always great, suddenly "began to surface everywhere -- In economics textbooks, articles on evolutionary biology, political science treatises, mathematics journals," as his works, like that of all geniuses, became more rather than less relevant to modern life and modern thought. (Nassar, pp. 19-20).

Miraculously, by the time Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994, he had manifested a spontaneous recovery from his mental illness. Sometimes this happens with paranoid schizophrenics, although it is rare. His remission occurred without the aid of therapy or drugs, although his wife, whom he later remarried and lives with to this day, attributes his newfound enthusiasm to being in the atmosphere of campus life. Now, "at seventy-three John looks and sounds wonderfully well." Nash states that he is certain he will not suffer a relapse. "It is like a continuous process rather than just waking up from a dream." And understanding processes of the human mind in a rational and mathematical way were and are Nash's specialty. (Nassar, p. 389)

3. Text

The house actually becomes a source of personal healing and revelation for Catherine, who is really her father's daughter and much closer to her father both in terms of their mutual mathematical genius and their mental illness. ithin the house, Catherine has had formative conversations with her father, including the one about the proof. There are multiple dimensions and levels of interaction here. Catherine has proven herself to be a mathematical genius, but her father failed to recognize completely to what extent his daughter really was revolutionary. Her proof was locked up in his drawer, leading Catherine's boyfriend Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) to believe that it was actually Robert's. One cannot blame Hal for believing this, given where the proof was found. Yet there is an undercurrent of both gender bias and bias against people with mental illness in his initial inability to trust Catherine's assertion that the proof was…...

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Works Cited

Auburn, David. Proof. Faber & Faber, 2001.

Madden, John. Proof. [Feature Film]. 2005.

Papamichael, Stella. "Proof (2006)." BBC. Retrieved online:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/01/30/proof_2006_review.shtml

Certainly! Here are some essay topic ideas for the movie "A Beautiful Mind":

1. Analyzing John Nash's character development throughout the film.
2. Exploring the theme of mental illness and its portrayal in "A Beautiful Mind."
3. Examining the impact of supporting characters on Nash's journey.
4. Discussing the representation of academia and intellectual pursuits in the movie.
5. Critically analyzing the use of visual effects and cinematic techniques to depict Nash's hallucinations.
6. Investigating the social and psychological implications of Nash's decision to conceal his mental illness.
7. Addressing the portrayal of love and relationships in the film, particularly focusing on Nash's marriage with Alicia.
8. Evaluating....