Schizoaffective Disorders In The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys were a sensation throughout the 1960s. While it has been said that their best albums weren’t respected until many years later, there is not a doubt that they were one of the most popular and influential musical groups in history. The Beach Boys’ front man, Brian Wilson suffers from mental illness (Moverman, 2015). For many years he had a greedy psychotherapist that misdiagnosed him in an attempt to essentially drug him to death (Moverman, 2015). A documentary showcasing the life of Brian Wilson depicts the struggles he faced, and still faces with what is now known as schizoaffective disorder (Moverman, 2015). He called it Love & Mercy, after a song he released after finally receiving the proper treatment for his

While schizoaffective disorder is less common than schizophrenia, the episodes of delusion, and hysteria are intermittent, the mood changes are however constant (Halter, 2014). According to Varcarolis’ Foundations of Psychiatric Health Nursing, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders are characterized by many similar symptoms. Symptoms Brian Wilson expressed in the film included: writing feelings down as he experienced them, hearing voices in his head, losing focus in things very quickly, and yelling Ledbetter’s name loudly when he forgot her apartment number while picking her up for their first date (Moverman, 2015). Other symptoms seen in the film that are also described in the book are: circumstantiality, when people carry out unnecessary details when telling an anecdote, tangentality, when the main idea of a story is left behind to discuss something completely different or off topic, flight of ideas, moving rapidly from one idea to the next. These traits made it difficult for his band to understand his musical ideas; however, it is possible that they are what made his music so innovative (Moverman, 2015). More symptoms characteristic of Wilson’s condition included the inability to maintain attention, auditory hallucinations, which are defined as auditory perceptions of reality without any sort of precipitating stimuli (Halter, 2014). Wilson describes the voices as derogatory in nature, but mostly indistinguishable (Gilstrap, 2015). In addition, he was experiencing catatonia and anergia, while lying in bed for over a year (Halter, 2014). Another symptom expressed in the film was boundary impairment; he stole Ledbetter’s cheeseburger at a barbecue because he was hungry (Moverman, 2015). Wilson