Ron Howard's, A Beautiful Mind

In Ron Howard's work, A Beautiful Mind, depicts the real life account of Professor John Nash and his struggle with paranoid Schizophrenia. The topic of mental illness has become popularized as of late, particularly in popular media (film, television). This focus on mental disorders has greatly improved awareness of mental disorders, but this media has become a double edged sword. The same process that educates people (ie these films and shows) can also disseminate largely false or misleading information. In the film, both sides of this information distribution phenomena are 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 treatment given to Dr. Nash.

The first area that must be analyzed in the assessment of the accuracy of paranoid Schizophrenia as shown in A Beautiful Mind is the onset and early development of symptoms. The onset of the disease 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 graduate school). This age is in line with the current 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 graduated 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...

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...on medication 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 second time. This is not true, Nash actually rejected taking any medication after his second hospitalization and has been managing his symptoms since. The producers felt that this rejection of modern medicine would encourage more people to reject medication.

To summarize, although the depiction of Nash's 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 license" of a real account or real disorder.