A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind research paper due and don't know how to start it? How about like this?
Schizophrenia, and its subtype paranoid schizophrenia are complex mental disorders that continue to challenge mental health professionals in the determination of its systemic origin and appropriate treatments to facilitate recovery. Manifested by symptoms that include delusions, hallucinations and the inability to work, study, socialize or provide self-care, schizophrenia is made even more complex by the paranoiac preoccupation of its delusions and hallucinations. The following is an examination of how paranoid schizophrenia, its symptoms and treatment are represented in the film "A Beautiful Mind" and how these representations compare with the established diagnostic criteria and literature on the disorder.
John Nash
The film "A Beautiful Mind" is based on a fictional interpretation of the real-life experiences and events in the life of the renowned Princeton professor, mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash who was diagnosed with adult onset paranoid schizophrenia in the 1950s culture. The film portrays Nash's gradual mental decline and the human mind, his intermittent recovery and relapse through the use and termination of an innovative regimen of drug therapy and his eventual resignation to the fact that his sustained mental health would depend on facing his delusions, on his life-long compliance with drug treatment as well as the purposeful pursuit of a less stressful lifestyle and increased social connections. These elements of his symptoms and recovery have been both challenged and supported as viable representations and solutions to addressing the psychological disorderof schizophrenia.
Criteria for Schizophrenia
The basic criteria for schizophrenia as defined by the DSM-IV include the frank manifestation of at least two of the following symptoms in at least one month in a duration of sixth months where the symptoms were evidenced:
- Delusions (only one symptom is required if a delusion is bizarre).
- Hallucinations (only one symptom is required is hallucinations consist of two voices or running commentary of patient's thoughts or actions).
- Dysfunction in the ability to work, study, socialize or provide self-care.
Schizophrenia is diagnosed paranoiac if the patient manifests a preoccupation with these symptoms. The criteria of incoherent, derailed, disorganized or reduced speech, or disorganized or catatonic behavior associated with general schizophrenia is not associated with paranoid schizophrenia.