A Beautiful Mind illustrates many of the topics relating to psychological disorders. The main character of the film, John Nash, is a brilliant mathematician who suffers from symptoms of Schizophrenia. His symptoms include paranoid delusions, grandiosity, and disturbed perceptions. The disease disrupts his social relationships, his studies, and his work. The more stressful his life becomes the more his mind is not able to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
Nash's first hallucination is in his college dorm room when his drunken roommate Charles appears. Charles acts as a mentor to Nash by making him realize that work and studies are not the only things life has to offer. Throughout his life, Nash has been a "lone wolf", and Charles
He even wins the Nobel Prize for his mathematical achievements. He dedicates his award to his wife for being supportive.
The movie's portrayal of schizophrenia was mostly accurate. Nash would be described as a paranoid schizophrenic, having delusions and hallucinations with themes of persecution and grandiosity. His personality fits the description of someone with schizophrenia because he lives in his own inner world and he is socially withdrawn and isolated. The disease developed over time from a chronic history of social inadequacy. As shown in the movie, Nash had a difficult time relating to his peers and talking to women. It also developed at the standard age, late adolescence during his years at college. Another realistic feature of the film was that once the disease developed, the hallucinations were triggered by stress. Nash experienced disturbed perceptions in the form of three of his senses. He heard voices; saw people that didn't exist and was even able to believe he was touching these people. At times schizophrenics inflict pain on themselves in response to voices or imagined reality. In Nash's case, he tore open his arm to find a sensor he had imagined that the government put in his body. The last thing that made the portrayal realistic was that research shows that given a supportive environment, some schizophrenics eventually recover to enjoy a normal life, and in the end that's what happened with Nash. He was able to live his life