A beautiful mind

Anne Tam
3rd Hour
May 14, 2009

A Beautiful Mind

1) The psychological disorder that John Nash had was schizophrenia. This illness was diagnosed because John was imagining and talking to people that were not really there, for example, his roommate and his niece, and Parcher, the man that is making John think he is working for the government. John collects all these newspaper clippings together, and pins them all up, trying to devise a way to figure out where the Russians will attack next.

2) The symptoms that John Nash revealed during the film was that

3) John Nash managed to have a successful career because he was taking medication at first. Later, he realized that he did not want to take medication because it made him not able to do his work or handle the baby. Though he still saw hallucinations of the three people, John said goodbye to them, knowing they were only in his mind, and ignored them for the rest of his life even when he saw them or when they talked to him.

4) John Nash coped with his illness by first taking medication. He then realized he did not need the medication, and realized that his hallucinations were what they were. And soon learned how to cope with the hallucinations by just ignoring them and everything they have to say or do.

5) The types of treatment that John Nash received to help him with his illness is drug therapy, and shock therapy. The drug medication slowed John down. Making him not able to do things with his child or do his work, and that is why John decided that not taking his medication is the better thing to do even though he would still see the hallucinations without his medicine. Another treatment John received was electric shock therapy. John had to receive this every five days for ten weeks, and this rewired his brain into trying to not see the hallucinations. This treatment helped John.

6) The character I chose to discuss was his wife, Alicia. Throughout John’s disorder, I would say that Alicia was very strong. There were times where she felt that she could not be able to live with someone who imagined people and became violent because of it, but she worked through it with John, and now they are still happily married. She helped John cope with his psychological disorder by working with him through it, and being with him the entire way. She supported him and accepted that John did not want to receive drug therapy.

7) a) Yes, the movie did provide me with a better understanding of physiological disorders because one minute your life could be normal, and the next it can change to having a physiological disorder without warning. You don’t know whether you are going to get it or not.
b) Yes, I was surprised that even though John confronted the hallucinations and told them he knew that they were fake, they kept coming back to him. I would have thought that once John realized they were fake, the hallucinations would then leave him along. However, the hallucinations kept coming back and more persistent then ever.