Edited by Treyvn Lucatero

Anna Kleckerova takes a look at the mental health disease Schizophrenia that often manifests in young adults. Medication is available, but some, like Professor John Nash of MIT, opt to go it alone.

Schizophrenia is a mental disease often characterized by abnormal social behavior and failure to recognize what is real. The most common symptoms are hallucinations, paranoia, delusions and collapse in emotions. It usually starts in young adulthood, and symptoms are identified through a patient’s actions and perceived experiences.

A person who has this disease often thinks that someone or something follows him. He has a compulsive feeling that he has to talk to them and respect their rules and not tell anyone. With time, it gets worse and suddenly the person can’t distinguish between reality and imagination. At this point, social isolation comes with the inability to remember and do certain things. Aggression can also appear over time.

I would like to refer to a movie which helped me to understand this disorder of the mind. The movie is called A Beautiful Mind and is directed by Ron Howard and stars Russell Crowe. This story is based on the true story of John Nash. It starts with a very smart man who is a genius in math and goes to Princeton University. His symptoms are already apparent in his young age when he has an illusion of a roommate who helps him with everything. Even though our main hero is extremely antisocial and going to classes sounds stupid to him, he makes it through university with producing an excellent paper on governing dynamics and gets a great job at MIT. Unfortunately, he considers his new job uninteresting and boring. Some years later, people from the Pentagon come for him to break some important code, and he cracks it. After this event, another illusion appears. This time it is a man who works for the United States Department of Defense who wants him to break more codes to uncover Russia’s secret plan on attacking the USA. By that time, John falls in love with his lovely student Alicia Larde who soon becomes pregnant. With time, John Nash has difficulty distinguishing what is real and what is not. He attacks poor Alicia in order to protect her from his nonexistent boss from the Department of Defense. As a matter of fact, none of the characters or tasks from the Department of Defense are real. This attack makes her call a psychiatrist. Then, Nash begins treatment with medication for schizophrenia. However, Nash stops taking the medication after time because he grows too aggressive with it. He can’t take care of his own baby. And, he can’t think clearly. However, when he discontinues the medication, his hallucinations come back. By the end of movie, Nash is able to ignore his hallucinations, and he wins a Nobel Prize for his article regarding governing dynamics.

We can see that the medication helps Nash to not have visions and hallucinations, but he is not able to do any of the things he holds dear. So, schizophrenia is a very serious disease which can be treated by medication, but it can cause less concentration and decrease the ability to work normally.